Patrick Diamond

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Patrick Diamond (born 1974) is a British policy advisor, author and historian connected with the Labour Party.

He is presently the Director of Policy and Strategy for the Commission for Equality and Human Rights a post to which he was appointed in August 2007. Before that, he was the director of Policy Network, an international progressive politics thinktank and a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics. Previously to his appointment in mid Summer 2005, he served as a special adviser and member of Prime Minister Tony Blair's policy unit from 2001.

From 2000 to 2001, he was a special advisor to then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson. Prior to entering British politics, Diamond worked in London as a fellow of the Institute for Public Policy Research. Diamond has written widely on contemporary politics and is a regular contributor to European dailies like The Guardian. He is co-author with Anthony Giddens of The New Egalitarianism (Polity, 2005) and also edited New Labour's Old Roots (Polity, 2004), a study of the revisionist social democratic tradition within the Labour Party. Patrick Diamond was Chair of Labour Students in 1998.

Patrick Diamond is also a former National Chair of Labour Students, winning election in 1998. As well as Hartlepool he has been linked with a number of high profile Labour seats in the past, most notably being tipped by The Evening Standard, to run for Tony Blair's Sedgefield seat when he stood down from office although the seat eventually went to Phil Wilson.

A regular contributor to Fabian and Progress panel events and publications, Patrick Diamond is seen as one the leading exponents of New Labour's public services reform agenda in the academic arena. Although he has been described in the past as an ultra-Blairite, he has not been unafraid to crticise New Labour for failing to make a coherent and powerful case for the more equal society it wishes to create. He has also expressed frustration at the speed and pace of change during the New Labour era as this 2006 Sky News Interview with Adam Boulton demonstrates^[1]

Diamond: But the issue is not how Labour reacts to David Cameron, the issue is for Labour how do we take forward the successful policy and political agenda that we followed over the past ten years and how do we meet the challenges in the future.

Boulton: And what’s the answer?

Diamond: Well, I think what we have to do is go ahead and go faster

Boulton: You’d go ahead with this political agenda? This radical agenda on identity cards, on education reform?

Diamond: Many people have said that the problem with this government is that is goes too fast, in my view the problem with the Blair government is that it hasn’t gone fast enough in some key areas. If you look at the challenges that we face today; take school standards. We have made big progress since 1997 but the truth is there are still thousands of children today who don’t leave school with the requisite five good GCSE’s that you need to make a success of life and work. And what do we do in response to that? Do we say go slower in changing our education system or do we say our obligation as a Labour party of the centre left is to go faster so that children from whatever class background they come from have the opportunity to do better and fulfill their potential. So the issue is not David Cameron, the issue is does Labour go forward and does it move the country forward.