Political Views
Duncan is a libertarian. The Guardian has variously described him as 'economically libertarian' and 'socially libertarian'. He has been described as the 'liberal, urbane face of the Conservative Party'. He is a moderniser within the Conservative Party.
One of the chapters in his book Saturn's Children is devoted to an explanation of his support for the legalisation of all drugs. However this chapter was removed when the paperback edition was published to prevent embarrassment to the Party leadership. The omitted chapter was available on Duncan's personal website; however, as of 2011 it no longer appears. He believes in minimising the size of government, and in Saturn’s Children advocated limiting government responsibility to essential services such as defence, policing and health. He has been described as a "staunch" Eurosceptic.
He is on the council of the Conservative Way Forward (CWF) group. He is one of the leading British members of Le Cercle, a secretive foreign policy discussion forum. In contrast with most members of both CWF and Le Cercle, who hold pro-Republican Atlanticist views, he actively supported John Kerry in the US 2004 presidential election. Duncan is friends with Kerry, having met him whilst at Harvard.
Read more about this topic: Alan Duncan
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or views:
“Both the Moral Majority, who are recycling medieval language to explain AIDS, and those ultra-leftists who attribute AIDS to some sort of conspiracy, have a clearly political analysis of the epidemic. But even if one attributes its cause to a microorganism rather than the wrath of God, or the workings of the CIA, it is clear that the way in which AIDS has been perceived, conceptualized, imagined, researched and financed makes this the most political of diseases.”
—Dennis Altman (b. 1943)
“No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)