The proposition behind The Green Book was and remains that those with a broadly liberal democratic political outlook – especially but not confined to the Liberal Democrats – need to adopt a new approach to social and economic policy, putting centre stage the goal of preserving the natural world on which we all depend for our health, wellbeing and prosperity.
When we published The Green Book we argue that a low-carbon economy and environmental investments were the best ways to deliver lasting economic growth, create new jobs and share prosperity, and we succeeded at the time in stimulating debate around this agenda. It is now widely if not universally accepted that the environment should not be seen as a silo issue but integral to many others. Accordingly our focus is now wider.
A decade on, however, the political context for this discussion has changed significantly. We have seen Britain exit from the European Union, closely allied with the rise of populist and polarising forces here and in other countries. Successive Conservative governments have presided over political chaos, an underperforming economy and failing public services.
There is, we believe, a massive opportunity for the Liberal Democrats to set out an agenda for making a real difference to the future of the UK – but only by identifying innovative, radical and robust solutions with realistic strategies to deliver them.
With our guests, we explore these themes in our podcasts, produced in association with LibDem Podcast.
The podcast series
You can catch up with the latest debates below
More about the economy podcast
More about the Net Zero Debate podcast
More about the Brexit Debate podcast
More about the AI podcast
More about the heath podcast