Richard Holme

Lord Holme of Cheltenham came to that alliance via the Liberal party of which he was president in the year the SDP was launched. After Oxford and Harvard, Richard Holme became active in the Liberal party and stood for them unsuccessfully on several occasions. A director of RTZ-CRA, which now helps fund the Successor Generation project, Holme is a central figure in 'centre' politics. He has directed the Campaign for Electoral Reform; chaired the Constitutional Reform Centre; remains a director of Political Quarterly, as well as vice-chairman of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government and, in addition, chairs Threadneedle Publishing, a major publisher of political reference works.

He has been chairman of Brassey's, the defence publishers once owned by Robert Maxwell with a US subsidiary chaired by the late Senator John Tower, (President George Bush's unsuccessful nomination for Defence Secretary). He took over the chairmanship of the consultancy firm Prima Europe from Dick Taverne, the former Labour MP turned Social Democrat. Until his election as policy adviser to the Blair government, Prima also employed Roger Liddle, the former SDP candidate who jointly authored The Blair Revolution with Peter Mandelson.

Holme acted as treasurer of the Green Alliance for 11 years, during some of which time Tom Burke, an SDP activist turned adviser to Conservative governments, was director. Burke, a former adviser to David Owen, was one of a batch of younger SDP figures selected by the UK board for Successor Generation membership in its early days a decade ago.