Two quotes, the first from J. D. Mackie's A History of Scotland's description of the Reformation in Scotland and the second a self-description reported in a forthcoming biographical memior of Brian Barry published by the British Academy. Make of them, their possible implications in terms of contemporary political events, and my opinions on those events, what you will.
Practical politicians and calculating economists do not identify themselves with causes of uncertain value.
Barry once wrote that he could not remember a time when he was 'anything other than an atheist with a soft spot for the Church of England, a socialist exasperated by all sections of the Labour Party, and a sympathizer with the tribal vision of England a la Orwell ("a family with the wrong members in control") slightly suffocated by the reality of it'.
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