David Ian Marquand FBA FRHistS FRSA FLSW (20 September 1934 – 23 April 2024) was a British academic and Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP).
He was elected the MP for Ashfield in 1966 and served in the House of Commons until 1977, when he resigned his seat to work as Chief Advisor (from 1977 to 1978) to his mentor Roy Jenkins, who had been appointed President of the European Commission.
[2] In October 2016, it was reported that Marquand had left Labour once more, and had joined Plaid Cymru, though he remained hopeful for anti-Conservative parties to work together in the aftermath of the vote for Brexit.
Marquand wrote that Labour had "outlived its usefulness" as a means to progressive social change and that middle-class radicals needed a new platform for their ideas.
Britain, however, was wedded to a rigid economic liberalism which prevented the state from undertaking the necessary measures to meet the country's developmental needs.
[9] In The New Reckoning Marquand wrote: "The economies that have succeeded more spectacularly have been those fostered by developmental states, where public power, acting in concert with private interest, has induced market forces to flow in the desired direction.
In August 2008, Marquand published an article in The Guardian newspaper which was complimentary about Conservative Party leader David Cameron.