I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.

We need to start talking about inequality again; we need to start talking about the inequities and unfairnesses and the injustices of an excessively divided society, divided by wealth, by opportunity, by outcome, by assets and so forth.

I grew up in a world where the social democratic state was the norm, not the exception.

I can still boss people around. I can still write. I can still read. I can still eat, and I can still have very strong views.

The pleasures of mental agility are much overstated, inevitably - as it now appears to me - by those not exclusively dependent upon them.

What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.

If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants