Guardian: Last week, a 36-year-old man named Ricken Patel gave the Commonwealth Lecture at the Guildhall in London. It was entitled "The opportunity of our time" and promised a "new politics, a new activism, a new democracy".
The vaunting sense of optimism contained in those phrases is typical of Patel, a man who combines Panglossian platitudes with tough political nous to beguiling effect. He is not a politician, however, or some multimillionaire megalomaniac, but the founder and president of Avaaz, an...