Make liberalism (and the blog page!) great again 

What a time to be a liberal in Europe. Populism is on the rise, across the ocean we have a President who makes a daily effort to shake up the international liberal order, and conservative views are becoming more popular. 

At the same time, liberals are now framed as ‘the mainstream’, ‘the status quo’ or ‘the elites’. And that (unfortunately) sticks… 

Time for a change. As liberals in Europe – with lost elections and bad polls across Europe – we have nothing left to lose and everything to gain. Now is the time to be bold. 

The Economist, when the magazine celebrated its 175 years anniversary a couple of years ago, wrote a great piece called ‘A Manifesto for Renewing Liberalism’. One sentence is particularly striking: ‘‘The true spirit of liberalism is not self-preserving, but radical and disruptive.’’ 

To that I say: Amen! 

We can’t be boring, we need to show heart and do away with technocratic language. Let’s show the world some authentic liberal leadership. Or as Zoltán Kész recently put it in an ELF paper: ‘‘The liberal brand must be repackaged, and the emotional connection to the ideal of freedom must be reignited among voters.’’ 

The far right and populist are working together creating a global narrative that is seductive, if flawed. It is our job as liberals to create and communicate a better vision for the world and to renew public trust in the benefits of open societies and free individuals that made Europe one of the most prosperous, secure places on earth. Put simply, we must own the future and not let others tell our story.  

And the liberal thinking shouldn’t stop either. Dr. Maria Alesina (ELF Senior Fellow) has already done some great work on laying down some of the foundations for European Liberalism for the 21st Century. With our liberal agenda of security, freedom and prosperity, we can truly make Europe thrive.  

But there is a lot more work to do. My key message for this blog, as the new policy and research manager at ELF, is that we welcome all of your bold, new liberal ideas!  

The blog is a great starting point to test and spread your liberal ideas. It is my mission to revive this platform! A good blog does three things: 1) It has current relevance 2) It involves some analysis 3) It sparks the debate. All of this in a maximum of 800 words. Game on! 

As the ELF Secretariat, we will be creative and use the blog page in other ways as well. In my case: I promise to write a blog post soon about my recent trip to the United States, where I joined an FNF study tour on ‘the Economic Power of AI’. 

I look forward to all of your contributions. You can share your ideas, proposals and concept blog posts with me via email (mschulz@liberalforum.eu).  

Sincerely, 

Maartje Schulz, Policy and Research Manager at ELF