The academic and former Labour MP David Marquand, who has died aged 89, was one of the foremost political analysts of his generation on the centre left of British politics. His life and work was spent in pursuit of how best to achieve political, economic and social reform within a pluralist social democracy, an ambition that was unfulfilled, but about which he remained consistently optimistic.
An independent-minded, progressive intellectual, Marquand combined a successful academic career as a politics professor with both political activism and a prolific stream of published history and journalism. He poured his considerable energy into a raft of thoughtful analytical books and essays on the future direction of the left in Britain. The Unprincipled Society (1988), The Progressive Dilemma (1991), The New Reckoning (1997) and Britain Since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy (2008) are among his most influential publications.
