Academic career and writings
Marquand's academic career began as lecturer in Politics at the University of Sussex and included the occupancy of two chairs in Politics, first at Salford and then at Sheffield and finally as Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. At the time of his death, Marquand was a visiting fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield.
Marquand's writings are broadly based upon issues surrounding British politics and social democracy. He is widely linked to the term "progressive politics" and the concept of a "progressive dilemma" in British politics, although while he continued to advocate the ideas behind the term, he later distanced himself from the shorthand term itself. Marquand wrote extensively on the future of the European Union and the need for constitutional reform in the United Kingdom.
In the aftermath of Labour's defeat in the 1979 election, Marquand wrote "Inquest on a Movement: Labour's Defeat and Its Consequences" for the July 1979 issue of Encounter. He argued that the influx of middle-class radicals into the Labour Party during the interwar years had transformed Labour from a trade union pressure group into the main progressive party. All of its leaders since 1935 (when Clement Attlee took the helm) and many of its most prominent members had come from this class, crucially shaping the party's ethos. However, with Labour moving to the left in the 1970s, Marquand believed that the party was becoming intolerantly proletarian and attached to an old-fashioned socialism. This change in the party was symbolised by the 1976 election as party leader of James Callaghan, the least intellectual of the six candidates. 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. For this article Marquand was awarded (jointly with E. P. Thompson) the George Orwell Memorial Prize for 1980. In the 1980s Marquand was co-editor of The Political Quarterly.
Marquand addressed Britain's relative economic decline in The Unprincipled Society (1988) and The New Reckoning (1997). He argued that this decline was caused by Britain's failure to become a developmental state like France, Germany and Japan. In those countries state intervention had encouraged industrial development and had facilitated the necessary adjustments to competition. 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. 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."
Originally a tentative supporter of Tony Blair's New Labour, he later became a trenchant critic, arguing that "New Labour has 'modernised' the social-democratic tradition out of all recognition", even while retaining the over-centralisation and disdain for the radical intelligentsia of the old "Labourite" tradition. He was one of 20 signatories to the founding statement of the democratic left-wing group Compass.
In August 2008, Marquand published an article in The Guardian newspaper which was complimentary about Conservative Party leader David Cameron. Marquand called Cameron not a crypto-Thatcherite but a Whig and argued that Cameron "offers inclusion, social harmony and evolutionary adaptation to the cultural and socio-economic changes of his age."
Marquand was among 30 people to sign a letter to The Guardian, headlined "Lib Dems Are The Party of Progress," in support of the Liberal Democrats at 2010 general election but withdrew this support less than a month after the election.
Marquand rejoined the Labour Party and came out in full support of the then leader Ed Miliband.
Marquand was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998. He is recognised by the newly opened Marquand Reading Room at his old school, Emanuel School in London. He was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2013.
