Politicians From England

"I think the idea of a second referendum is perfectly ridiculous."

"My suspicion is that any delay to Brexit is a plot to stop Brexit. This would be the most grievous error that politicians could commit."

"How you police your border is a decision for a sovereign state"

"The Remainers are fighting their last rear-guard action to try and stop Brexit"

"I have always thought that no deal is better than Mrs May's deal, but Mrs May's deal is better than not leaving at all."

"I want us to leave the European Union"

"Parties that try and gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them – as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections. We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well."

"Once we have left and we have control, there is a political argument about what levels of immigration we should have... that is really going to be a challenge and an issue for the competence of the Home Office. It is not so much a question of Brexit. It is Brexit which makes it possible, it is then administrative efficiency that will make it happen."

"Basically I want people to be able to get on with their lives without the government bossing them about. I’m all in favour of nannies but not the nanny state."

"Life is sacrosanct and begins at the point of conception,"

"What we are seeing from this government is a deliberate decision not to deliver a proper Brexit"

"Pakistanis, living in England? They're not in a class by nature of where they've come from."

"I am a Catholic and I take the teachings of the Catholic Church seriously,"

"No Conservative would do anything to harm the union and that crucially includes Northern Ireland."

"Leaving on a world trade deal is a perfectly sensible thing to do but I think we can do better"

"I do wish you wouldn’t keep going on about the nanny [...] If I’d had a valet, you’d think it was perfectly normal."

"[The voluntary support given to food banks is] rather uplifting and shows what a compassionate country we are"

"I thought Uxbridge was a fundamentally important result for us. It shows that if you are on the side of voters and doing things to make their lives better, rather than worse, then lo and behold people will actually vote for you. Let other countries catch up and let us catch their breath. Let us move away from an ideological view of net zero and work with the environment in a way that is affordable."

"[Accepting EU trade rules and regulations would be] the worst option [for Brexit]. It's hard to think of a worse idea."

"I'm a man of the people. Vox populi, vox dei."

"We need to be free to do deals with the rest of the world. We must be out of the protectionist common external tariff which mainly protects inefficient EU industries at the cost to British consumers."

"The transition which the EU is offering means that we're still effectively in the European Union for the following two years,"

"We could have two referendums. As it happens it might make more sense to have the second referendum after the renegotiation is completed."

"the county of Somerset as defined by the Lieutenants Act shall revert to the customary time used prior to the Great Western Railway time established in 1840"

"I am a late convert to social media and it's turned out to be great fun"

"It (the European Court of Justice) cannot be our senior court for a day after we leave the EU"

"Leaders stand up for their men. They encourage them to try and defend them when they fail."

"We have a real choice: either we choose to shape events or we will be shaped by them. Over many centuries, the people of the United Kingdom have got into the habit of being actors in this world, rather than being acted upon by it."

"I'm interested in your answers to my questions, not to the questions you wished I'd asked."

"Those who have never fought for the colours they fly, should be careful about criticising those who have."

"Fundamentally I think soldiering is pretty similar to politics. It's not about you, it's all about the people you serve with. It's all about the results, it's all about the operation, it's all about the mission. The reason we're here at all in politics is to serve the people."

"This, if not an act of war, was certainly a warlike act by the Russian Federation…"

"The people you step over when you come out of the opera."

"I do not dwell in the country, nor am I acquainted with the plough, but I think that whosoever doth not maintain the plough destroys the kingdom ... Excepting Sir Thomas More's Utopia...you shall never find but the ploughman is chiefly provided for."

"It was as a mob-orator that Randolph Churchill excelled; no speaker of our day was for a few years such a popular hero. The effrontery with which he assailed accepted idols, his mastery of a rather coarse but pungent humour, his racy sallies, his use of large-sounding phrases in the Disraelian manner, and the belief that he was the prophet of a new political creed, which was permanently to attach the democracy to the Tory Party, combined to make him the darling of the crowd. I remember asking one of his Birmingham supporters the reason of his amazing popularity. "We like our liquors neat," was the reply, "and Randolph gives 'em us d——d neat.""

"I can speak from personal recollection of his performances both in Parliament and in the country. I heard many of the personal attacks upon Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal Government, and, perhaps, scarcely less upon the respectable persons who then led the Conservative party, by means of which he hewed his way to fame. The tomahawk was always in his hand. It is impossible to describe the gleeful ferocity with which he swept off the scalps of friend and foe. Some of these speeches contained the grossest errors of taste, and nearly all were marked by a vein of almost burlesque exaggeration. In later times, however, he led the House of Commons for a few weeks with unquestionable brilliance, and some of his speeches showed a rapidly-growing sense of responsibility and great constructive power. His manner, like his speeches, revelled in contrast, alternating from extreme insolence to sweet reasonableness and an engaging courtesy. Like Disraeli, on whom he clearly modelled himself, he oscillated between the adventurer and the statesman. He spoke with a voice resonant, but not musical, from copious notes, and often committed large portions of his speech to memory. He gesticulated much with his hands; the fierce twirling of his moustache and his protruding eye were favourite themes with the political caricaturist."

"He is a very difficult person to give an impartial and fair account of (laughter), but my own opinion of him, very imperfect as it is, is that if by any process you could cut out of him about half of the qualities he possesses you might make out of the other half a valuable and distinguished public servant (Laughter.)."

"From the moment Lord Randolph Churchill became Chancellor of the Exchequer responsible in large measure for the affairs of the nation, he ceased in vital matters to be a Tory. He adopted with increasing zest the Gladstonian outlook, with the single exception of Irish Home Rule; and in all social and labour questions he was far beyond what the Whig or middle-class Liberal of that epoch could have tolerated."

"I am not going to be dragged at the tail of the Conservative Party. My policy is very similar to that of Randolph Churchill."

"I may confess, however, that I do not feel quite like a fish out of water in a legislative assembly where English is spoken. I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my father's house to believe in democracy. "Trust the people." That was his message. I used to see him cheered at meetings and in the streets by crowds of workingmen way back in those aristocratic Victorian days when as Disraeli said "the world was for the few, and for the very few." Therefore I have been in full harmony all my life with the tides which have flowed on both sides of the Atlantic against privilege and monopoly and I have steered confidently towards the Gettysburg ideal of government of the people, by the people, for the people."

"Lord Randolph Churchill, who was perhaps the shrewdest political prophet of his day."

"Lord Randolph Churchill may be best described as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of modern politics. The secret of his rapid success is very simple—he has always known exactly what time of day it is. As for the public at large, there are, he saw, only two sure ways of bringing down the House. One is to appeal to the higher moral sentiments, the other to use a great many "big, big D’s." His lordship went in for the big D’s, and his platform performances are dictated by a constant desire to meet a demand to "give it ’em hot, Randy.""

"His career was not a complete success, and yet it was far from a failure. While it lasted it eclipsed the fame of almost all who were then engaged in politics. Many, no doubt, severely censured his methods and the violence of his attacks... And the antipathy was almost as great as the enthusiasm which he excited. Not a few good men thought him absolutely wicked, and beyond the pale of political salvation. But, while he was a figure, he enlisted public interest and public admiration as no one did but Mr. Gladstone: his popularity, indeed, was at one time almost unbounded."

"I read industriously almost every word he had ever spoken and learnt by heart large portions of his speeches. I took my politics almost unquestioningly from him. He seemed to me to have possessed in the days of his prime the key alike to popular oratory and political action. Although Lord Randolph Churchill lived and died a loyal Tory, he was in fact during the whole of his political life, and especially during its finest phase after he had left office for ever, a liberal-minded man. He saw no reason why the old glories of Church and State, of King and country, should not be reconciled with modern democracy; or why the masses of working people should not become the chief defenders of those ancient institutions by which their liberties and progress had been achieved. It is this union of past and present, of tradition and progress, this golden chain, never yet broken, because no undue strain is placed upon it, that has constituted the peculiar merit and sovereign quality of English national life."

"What you call my "self-renunciation" is merely an effort to deal with an abnormal, and very difficult, state of things. It arises from the peculiarities of Churchill. Beach having absolutely refused to lead, Churchill is the only possible leader in the Commons, as his ability is unquestionable. But he is wholly out of sympathy with the rest of the Cabinet: and being besides of a wayward and headstrong disposition, he is far from mitigating his resistance by the method of it. As his office of Leader of the House gives him a claim to be heard on every question, the machine is moving along with the utmost friction both in home and foreign affairs. My self-renunciation is only an attempt—a vain attempt—to pour oil upon the creaking and groaning machine. Like you, I am penetrated with a sense of the danger which the collapse of our Government would bring about, otherwise I should not have undertaken, or should have quickly abandoned, the task of leading an orchestra in which the first fiddle plays one tune, and everybody else, including myself, wishes to play another."

"For the purposes of recreation he has selected the felling of trees, and we may usefully remark that his amusements, like his politics, are essentially destructive. (Laughter.) Every afternoon the whole world is invited to assist at the crashing fall of some beech or elm or oak—the forest laments in order that Mr. Gladstone may perspire."

"The Prime Minister [William Ewart Gladstone] is the greatest living master of the art of personal advertisement."

"How many more of England's heroes—how many more of England's best and bravest—are to be sacrificed to the Moloch of Mid Lothian?"

"Now some of our friends in the party have a lesson to learn which they do not seem disposed to learn. The Conservative party will never exercise power until it has gained the confidence of the working classes; and the working classes are quite determined to govern themselves, and will not be either driven or hoodwinked by any class or class interests. Our interests are perfectly safe if we trust them fully, frankly and freely; but if we oppose them and endeavour to drive them and hoodwink them, our interests, our Constitution and all we love and revere will go down. If you want to gain the confidence of the working classes, let them have a share and a large share—a real share and not a sham share—in your party Councils and in your party government."

"The great bulk of the Tory party throughout the country is composed of artisans and labouring classes. They are directly represented here to-day; they are always directly represented on your Council; no party management can be effective and healthy unless the great labouring classes are directly represented on the Executive of the party. I hope before long to see Tory working men in Parliament."