There couldn’t be a more exhilarating time to become editor of Prospect. Thanks to David Goodhart, now editor at large, for a warm and gracious handover—and for his report from Nick Clegg’s Sheffield seat, as Lib Dem ministers begin their “walk through fire” over  tuition fees.

I’ve been asked how I will take Prospect forward. That’s easy. We live in extraordinary times. Prospect should do what it’s always done: ask the big questions about our culture and our future. And we should answer them, with wit, a sense of fun, and directness. I’m a firm advocate of worldliness: of making the best judgement possible at any time, knowing that it may well have to be revised, and not disdaining compromise. As Nick Clegg says in our interview, the protests over fees are the price for the Lib Dems of living in the “real world” of government.

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