The right-of-centre parties still often compete with left-of-centre ones to proclaim their attachment to all the main programmes of spending, particularly spending on social services of one kind or another. But this foolish as well as muddled. It is foolish because left-of-centre parties will always be able to outbid right-of-centre ones in this auction - after all, that is why they are on the left in the first place. The muddle arises because once we concede that public spending and taxation are than a necessary evil we have lost sight of the core values of freedom.

We simply cannot delegate the exercise of mercy and generosity to others.

There are no personal sympathies in politics.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

How thin is the crust of order over the fires of human appetite and the lust for naked power.

Let us, then, draw together in the name, not of jingoism, but of justice

Russia is bent on world domination.