"Namier himself treated it as virtually an axiom about all political behaviour that the actors engage in it solely out of a desire to acquire and exercise political power. It follows that their professed principles, or rather their "party names and cant", as Namier characteristically preferred to put it in The Structure of Politics, form no guide at all to the "underlying realities" of politics. They are invoked merely to ensure that the "unconscious promptings" and "inscrutable components" of personal ambition and the quest for domination which actually drive men into politics are "invested ex post facto with the appearance of logic and rationality". It follows that all such "abstract ideals" must be mere epiphenomena, which play no independent role in determining any courses of political action, and which not only can but ought to be bypassed if we are to give realistic explanations of political behaviour. As Namier himself put it in his essay on "Human Nature in Politics", "what matters most is the underlying emotions, the music, to which ideas are a mere libretto, often of very inferior quality". And, as several recent commentators on his work have stressed, it was his express hope in studying eighteenth-century politics (and a large part of the attraction which the subject held for him) to be able to show that "considerations of principle or even of policy had only limited relevance" in this period, that "what mattered in politics" at this time "was not attachment to principle but the struggle for office", and in general that "political ideas" are "rarely in themselves the determinants of human action"."

"It was Namier's greatest service to English history that he described with sympathy and vast knowledge, the system of patronage and its place in the work of government at the moment of its fullest articulation before the rise of parties and principles forever destroyed it."

"It will be the Jews who will initially bear the brunt of Islamic fundamentalist hatred. It is therefore utterly ironic that at a time when Jewish institutions and schools in Europe require military protection and many Jews are leaving the continent because of escalating anti-Semitism, we find Jews worldwide at the vanguard promoting a migration movement comprising primarily the bitterest anti-Semitic elements. Even more incredible is the almost universal inclination by Jewish leaders to make analogies between the status of the current Middle East refugees and Jews during the Holocaust."

"They will [refugees] augment and strengthen the swelling Muslim enclaves – 50 million already living in Europe – which seek to impose Sharia law. Bernard Lewis, the renowned Islamic scholar, has predicted that unless drastic steps are taken to stem this movement, the high birth rates of the migrant population will irreversibly transform the entire demography of the region and bring about a Muslim majority by the end of the century."

"I am astonished at what I consider to be the dangerous and irrational gut response from bleeding- heart rabbis, Jewish leaders and organizations blindly calling on governments to absorb en masse the so-called “Syrian refugees” and trivializing the Holocaust by comparing them to the Jews of Nazi Europe. The principal reason to deplore this approach is that the overwhelming majority originate from Muslim countries other than Syria, and an estimated 70 percent are men of military age. Thus it is evident that the majority of this “refugee” population is not traditional families seeking sanctuary, but men seeking economic enhancement."

"Major European countries already harboring a substantial Muslim fundamentalist population will be further weakened by the new “refugees” who, whether Shi’ite or Sunni, all share a common contempt for democracy, Western values, Christianity and above all are pathologically anti-Semitic. It would also be delusional to imagine that these migrants will be more effectively integrated than their predecessors who seek to create parallel societies within their host countries. In the absence of adequate screening, the “refugees” will undoubtedly continue to include jihadis, especially taking account of the Islamic State (IS) boasts that it has embedded thousands of fighters in the exodus."

"Multiculturalism and diversity are admirable qualities for a democracy but can only apply if all parties are committed to an open society."