Open Left launch with James Purnell and Jon Cruddas – live tweets

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

Launching tonight at the Commonwealth Club in London, Open Left is Demos‘ new three-year study designed to rediscover the Left’s idealism, pluralism and appetite for radical ideas. It starts by asking an essential, but contested question: what does it mean to be on the Left today?

To kick off the debate, 12 leading thinkers have answered these questions on the Open Left website. And in the Guardian, James Purnell says it’s time to unite around our desire for a common society, while Jon Cruddas warns beware the liberal drift – the left is about equality.

Tonight’s launch will feature a discussion between James Purnell MP, Jon Cruddas MP, Will Hutton of the Work Foundation, Jess Search from the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation and Lewis Iwu, former head of the Oxford Student Union.

James Purnell will be writing for LabourList tomorrow about the launch event and the aims of the project, and we’ll be following that up with a LiveChat with the former Work and Pensions Secretary at 11am.

I’ll be live tweeting from the event from about 6pm tonight, so stay tuned here:

You can also follow LabourList’s tweets here.