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“... an entirely reasonable feeling that there must be more to political life than perpetual defeat. Neil Kinnock and John Smith felt this as strongly as their successors, but their successors went a lot further. In a famous essay published nearly ninety years ago, Max Weber suggested that politics was becoming the territory ...”

“... might call semi-New Labour, though even that description is misleading. The ‘soft left’ around Neil Kinnock (from which New Labour eventually emerged) was responsible for shedding most of Labour’s electorally unpopular policies, or at any rate those policies which, however sensible (for example, abandoning the ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent), were ...”

“... and among those who admired her work were Cyril Connolly and Al Alvarez. Edward Lucie-Smith included her in British Poetry since 1945 (1970) and Larkin put her in his Oxford Book of 20th-Century English Verse (1973). The living afterlife of her next forty years uncannily resembles that of Lynette Roberts, who published two completely original ...”

“... he could finish the book, but the revision was more or less complete. Peter Burton and Richard Smith have added chapters on film, the gay scene and rock music, for which Baker had left notes. The result is not just about drag, nor yet about female impersonation, and doesn’t even confine itself to the performing arts. Besides the contemporary pieces, Drag ...”

“... himself into running something like a campaign when competing for the leadership with Iain Duncan Smith and been ready to appear more tractable on Europe; if David Davis had moved decisively in the immediate aftermath of Michael Howard’s resignation or been a more fluent speaker; if Howard had offered Cameron the shadow chancellorship or George Osborne had ...”

“... William Westmoreland, the commanding officer in Vietnam, was asking for 206,000 more troops. Neil Sheehan and Hedrick Smith reported this leak, which was accurate and had a devastating effect on Congress and the American people. It did not come from Ellsberg, but ‘as I observed the effect of this leak,’ he ...”

“... all, the SNP’s leaders are sufficiently well versed in the jurisprudence of their late colleague Neil MacCormick, the professor of public law at Edinburgh and another gradualist, to perceive the ‘post-sovereignty’ parameters of 21st-century interdependence. But did Cameron really blunder? Probably, insofar as he takes seriously his responsibilities as ...”

“... to prison for a noticeable time, as would, certainly, one who met an insurrection in the way Dr Smith – another headmaster of Westminster – did, at the end of the 18th century. He felled the ring-leader with a club. Dr John Rae, the author of this book and the present incumbent of the post held by Busby and ...”

“... to come less than 2 per cent behind. At Airdrie and Shotts, in post-industrial Lanarkshire, Alex Neil of the SNP spectacularly broke through to seize the constituency from Labour by a majority of 2000. Airdrie was once coal and shale-oil mining, Shotts was coal and a great ironworks. I have known Alex as a friend for many years; son and grandson of South ...”

“... guardians of Saxon virtue lodged in the Corporation of London. Chief among them was Joshua Toulmin Smith, founder of the Anti-Centralisation League and authority on the history of parish and vestry. In The Metropolis and Its Municipal Administration (1852), he argued against bringing the City of London under the remit of the 1848 Public Health Act and praised ...”

“... carved out a space for himself there, allied with but not wholly subsumed by the Bennites. When Neil Kinnock took on Militant, Blunkett dragged his feet, publicly offered Derek Hatton an olive branch, and was considered ‘fundamentally untrustworthy’ by Kinnock and his circle as a result. Kinnock thought that Blunkett’s actions were dominated by his ...”

“... on Huawei’s involvement in Britain’s 5G network, and the bombardiers of Brexit – Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Liam Fox et al – are furious too. The industry points out that Huawei kit has already been installed in dozens of cities across the UK and to a more sophisticated standard than the US can currently provide. Ripping it all out would cost ...”

“... unpopular opposition leader on record, polling worse than Michael Foot, William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Howard and Ed Miliband, all of whom went on to lose general elections by significant margins, or did not get to contest them. There are 230 Labour MPs; on 28 June, 172 of them voted in favour of a no confidence motion in Corbyn, and only forty ...”

“... The same ‘cash for questions’ controversy also later accounted for two senior ministers, Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton, who had to leave their posts at the Northern Ireland Office and the Department of Trade respectively. The paradox behind this extraordinary succession of resignations is that none of them has been for ...”

“... of a Tory in a former Labour seat. Eventually this tide receded as well. With the election of Neil Kinnock as Labour leader, followed by his campaign to rid the Party of the Militant Tendency, the tone of the Guardian became more recognisably consistent with its traditions. Yet those traditions remain difficult to define. If pressed, I can only repeat the ...”