Given some of the recent exchanges between Richard Grayson and others, I found this comment from Richard in a book published in 2009 (and which I’m writing a review of over the holidays) interesting:

As for so-called economic liberals, look at the material in the Orange Book from David Laws, often characterised by the media and some Liberal Democrats as a high-priest of economic liberalism. One finds there a clear recognition of the effects on freedom of ‘poverty, poor housing, poor schooling and second-rate public services’. Within the Liberal Democrats, in internal discussions on manifesto and other policy statements, he has personally been a strong advocate of state spending on early years education, on the basis that this is the best place to tackle those inequalities which have the greatest impact on the life chances of children from the poorest families. These are not the views of a nineteenth-century Liberal.