Tony Wright > Quotes

“If politics without party is a recipe for impotence and chaos, the total domination of politics by party carries its own dangers.”
― Tony Wright, British Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“Indeed, in the 1970s the British model ceased to be the object of envy and emulation and came to be seen as the European basket case, the home of an adversarial kind of politics that prevented effective policy-making and brought the country to its knees.”
― Tony Wright, British Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“There is nothing more explosive than the politics of identity, and it has lurked just beneath the surface of British politics, testing to the limits a liberal tradition of tolerance and fueling a politics of racism and anti-immigration that has established itself on the fringe of British politics and had an impact on the mainstream.”
― Tony Wright, British Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“The English have always been the worst offenders, feeling no need to look beyond the end of their comfortable noses at the nature of the multinational state of which they are the overwhelmingly dominant part.”
― Tony Wright, British Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“The voracious appetite of the media demands non-stop feeding and prefers titillating bite-sized morsels that are easily digested to anything more substantial. Politics has become a permanent election campaign, involving an unceasing war of position between the parties, and between the parties and the media.”
― Tony Wright, British Politics: A Very Short Introduction

“Without a modern revolutionary moment, Britain was not compelled to remake its political institutions, draw up a new constitution, or decide what kind of state it wanted to be. It just went on being what it was, more or less. This might be seen as peculiar blessing, or as a kind of curse, but it is a fundamental fact about British politics.”
― Tony Wright, British Politics: A Very Short Introduction