I Very Much Wanted To Be Editor

I Very Much Wanted To Be Editor Of The 'new Statesman!' But I Never Wanted To Be Prime Minister, Except Maybe As A Little Boy.

If The Decline Of Christianity Created The Modern Political Zealot - And His Crimes - So The Evaporation Of Religious Faith Among The Educated Left A Vacuum In The Minds Of Western Intellectuals Easily Filled By Secular Superstition. There Is No Other Explanation For The Credulity With Which Scientists, Accustomed To Evaluating Evidence, And Writers, Whose Whole Function Was To Study And Criticize Society, Accepted The Crudest Stalinist Propaganda At Its Face Value. They Needed To Believe; They Wanted To Be Duped.

Bismarck Had Cunningly Taught The Parties Not To Aim At National Appeal But To Represent Interests. They Remained Class Or Sectional Pressure-groups Under The Republic. This Was Fatal, For It Made The Party System, And With It Democratic Parliamentarianism, Seem A Divisive Rather Than A Unifying Factor. Worse: It Meant The Parties Never Produced A Leader Who Appealed Beyond The Narrow Limits Of His Own Following.

John Major Is What He Is: A Man From Nowhere, Going Nowhere, Heading For A Well-merited Obscurity As Fast As His Mediocre Talents Can Carry Him.

The Most Socially Subversive Institution Of Our Time Is The One-parent Family.