By politics.co.uk staff

Nick Clegg has entered the debate on “progressive” politics today, launching a salvo against the Tories and Labour.

Writing in the Times today Mr Clegg claimed his party is “the choice for progressive voters at the next election”.

The Lib Dem leader criticised Labour, saying the party had “the wrong tools to meet the challenges of the modern world”.

“Labour is a spent force politically and ideologically after 12 disappointing years in government,” he said.

He also attacked the Conservatives for being out-of-date: “Despite all the rebranding, David Cameron’s Conservatives remain steeped in the misplaced view that the 19th-century nation state still makes sense in a 21st-century world.”

The Conservative party “parrots the language of change to maintain the status quo,” he added.

The article comes on the eve of the Lib Dem conference and coincided with the launch of a pamphlet The Liberal Moment which sets out the party’s arguments for being most suited to solving the problems of the times.