So far as the Labour party is concerned, The Open Society is almost entirely irrelevant. The Labour party from the Webbs to Attlee, though it believe… - Maurice Cowling

In the Conservative conception of freedom...there is a great deal of double-talk and many layers of concealed consciousness. Conservatives, if they talk about freedom long enough, begin to believe that that is what they want. But it is not freedom that Conservatives want; what they want is the sort of freedom that will maintain existing inequalities or restore lost ones, so far as political action can do this. And this is wanted not only by those who benefit from inequalities of wealth, rank and education but also by the enormous numbers who, while not partaking in the benefits, recognize that inequalities exist and, in some obscure sense, assume they ought to. They assume, that is to say, that a nation has to be stratified and that stratification entails privilege; and they assume this not as a matter of principle but because it is something to which they are accustomed. They are accustomed to inequalities; inequalities are things they associate with a properly functioning society.

I mean the liberalism which parades conscience more often than conscience ought to be paraded and which assumes that anyone who feels unable to use its language, or support its policies, is an idiot, a knave or a reactionary. I mean the liberalism to be found in the Guardian, the Observer and the new Times whose topics are race relations, crime, Africa, under-developed peoples, the indiscriminate expansion of university education and the maintenance of the illusory influence of a liberal Britain though the multiracial Commonwealth and the United Nations.

I mean a liberal doctrine and condescending manner which is particularly strong amongst undergraduate politicians and higher journalists, which is to be found in parts of all political parties and which, having its heroes in each generation, in this generation favours Messrs Jenkins, Crosland, Grimond and certain Conservatives whose names can easily be guessed.