Quote of the day 19th August 2018

"Easy" and "Solution" are words which should be banned from grown-up political discourse. Only crossword puzzles and the mysteries of Hercule Poirot are amenable to being "solved." Grown-up politics and grown-up government are about wrestling with intractable dilemmas which are almost bound to deliver compromises and fudges.


(Max Hastings, from an article in The Times called "There's no such thing as easy-peasy politics.")

The article finishes with the following paragraph:

"In an era of doubt about many things, one certainty glistens: any politician who asserts that answers to the problems posed by immigration, education, the NHS, railways, productivity or that interminable cross-Chanel negotiation are easy-peasy should be dismissed as a charlatan."

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