Today, Nick Clegg, delivered a speech which has been praised by Professor Nick Bosanquet as “The best speech on social mobility since that given by Lloyd George in 1910”.

It is clear that the Liberal Democrat members of the Coalition government have more progressive and realistic ideas on making Britain fairer than any of the Labour leadership candidates, who, with the exception of Diane Abbott were deeply implicated in Labour’s failure to make progress, while bankrupting the country with overzealous “investment” programmes that failed to reap the dividends promised.

The LibDem influence in the government is allowing those who genuinely see themselves as progressive Conservatives to come out in a way that would have been impossible in a Tory minority or majority government.