I went to a lunchtime talk by Eliane Glaser entitled "How to de-spin a party conference" at the RSA yesterday.
Actually it was a front for her new book called: Get Real: How to tell it like it is in an age of illusions......
It was a brave talk where she called for the main political parties in the UK to return to ideology rather than crowd the centre ground. I took issue with her (the pod cast is on www.therasa.org) and said that currently if a politician was to tell its voters that growth would be less than 1% for the next eight years, that the NHS will have to be rationed, that care for the elderly cannot be funded and so on that he or she wouldn't be elected. I agreed with her that there is a lack of leadership in the UK (and across Europe and America) but that is because none of us want to face a future where we see our power base eroded by China.