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“... Reform Select Committee of the House of Commons issued a report in March last year titled Do We Need a Constitutional Convention for the UK? The Liberal Democrats’ Home Rule and Community Rule Commission has advocated ‘home rule all round’ in a new federal union. A similar call has come from David Melding, the Conservative deputy presiding ...”

“... right’ and associated ideas – advanced during the Enlightenment by the abbé de St Pierre, Christian Wolff, Jeremy Bentham and others – about how a global society, a civitas maxima, might be established and maintained. The construction of a perpetual peace on this scale would not be possible without treating the coarse timber of an all ...”

“... commitment to impartiality entirely override my duties as a citizen. I tried as far as possible to do what a historian should do, to understand the motivations of people on both sides of the debate, including those who favoured Scottish independence; but the potential risks were so great, and the cheerleading for ...”

“... worlds. Behind Gibbon’s vision of the Old World, Pocock shows, was the French Orientalist Joseph De Guignes’s Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols et des autres Tartares occidentaux (1756-58). Notwithstanding the prevailing legend that the story of Oriental despotism was one of stasis and torpor, ...”

“... Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) presents several faces to the modern world. His measured acceptance of the new forces of democracy unleashed by the American and French Revolutions made him an icon of moderate centrist liberalism. However, he has also had his champions on the right, at least among sophisticated Cold Warriors determined to maintain connections with a broader liberal tradition, including, in his native France, Raymond Aron and Jean-François Revel, for whom Tocqueville’s oeuvre was the sole haven of grace and trust within a canon of modern political philosophy whose prescriptions – from right as much as left – seemed to lead to mass extermination or indoctrination ...”

“... Fabians attended by George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb, Attlee whispered to his brother: ‘Do we have to grow a beard to join this show?’ The confident pre-1914 left, he later reflected, had been too rigid in its scientific approach to social problems and altogether ‘too Webby’. Socialist eggheads remained a source of exasperation into the late ...”

“... resort to expletives. So it’s no big deal in itself that May’s political advisers do a lot of swearing. But that they did it in front of the clean-living daughter of a vicar, without rebuke or frown or raised eyebrow, suggests that the prime minister’s emotional costiveness is not simply a result of on-stage nerves. It is hardwired into her ...”

“... The pro-Europeans defeated the antis by a margin of 67 per cent to 33 per cent on the question ‘Do you think the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (Common Market)?’ History might not take exactly the same course, but it seemed unlikely that the 2016 result would defy both of these historical parallels. In the event history did not ...”

“... If​ Scots sometimes seem unduly exasperated with Brexiter nationalism, it isn’t just because they voted heavily against Brexit. Nor, in the case of Scottish unionists, is it simply a consequence of a well-founded anxiety that our reckless departure from the EU threatens to break up the United Kingdom. Rather, it comes from the perception that England’s nationalism is crude, unreflective and cartoonish by comparison with the arguments put forward for Scottish independence ...”

“... and racist prejudices – lurking in the neglected penumbra of American liberalism: ‘How do Americans get around all their constitutional safeguards and repress rivals, strangers and scary others? Morality. We are bound to honour our fellow citizens and their rights, unless the neighbours turn out to be bad. Then they can be – and often are ...”

“... less fanciful Edinburgh partners, RMJM. The attack on the Twin Towers imposed additional costs to do with improving security and strengthening the building. Above all, it was impossible to meet all the published objectives of the Holyrood project – a significant building in a central site, built to a tight timeframe and giving value for the ...”

“... maternal grandfather was a regicide who had signed Charles I’s death warrant. In The Trial of Dr Sacheverell (1973), which remains the standard account of the cleric’s career, the late Geoffrey Holmes wondered if Sacheverell’s soaring high churchmanship ‘contains in its very extremity more than a hint of revulsion from his own tainted stock’. This ...”

“... the question whether we have a responsibility to be healthy. But if his main concern is fiscal, do we then owe it to society to pass on the greens and tuck in to the chips? Welfare reform raises thorny issues of its own. Is dependency on the state bad for taxpayers or bad for the recipients of welfare? Cameron risks reviving the distinction between the ...”

“... built on the banks of the Potomac between 1963 and 1971 in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington DC. Its handy location between the centre of government and the traditional residences of Georgetown proved attractive to congressmen and members of the Nixon administration, who flocked to the new apartments. In 1967, the Democratic National Committee took over ...”

“... union. There was no need at all for a Scottish parliament. What would a white elephant like that do for Scotland that couldn’t be done in private? Much better, surely, to have a fierce Scot in the cabinet who, in return for doing the prime minister’s bidding, was indulged in his demands, however outrageous, for cross-border subsidy. Wilson was more ...”