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The generous way of putting it is that we were not ready for this. The less generous way is to say: How was it possible to return to the politics of appeasement of the 1930s?

Paddy Ashdown

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Paddy Ashdown
Age: 77 †
Born: 1941
Born: February 27
Died: 2018
Died: December 22
British Politician
Diplomat
Politician
New Delhi district
Jeremy John Durham Ashdown
Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
Return
Ready
Possible
Politics
Appeasement
Less
Appease
Way
Comeback
Generous
Putting

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What my future will not be is active politics in the Liberal Democrat party.
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Maybe it's legitimate criticism, though it can be hurtful. Maybe I haven't paid sufficient attention to the people with whom I would have a natural affinity as a liberal, and they feel let down by that.
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My second job has been to try to use my power to create institutions of a modern state that could enter the European Union, and there was very little time. The door was closing, and I wanted to get Bosnia through before it shut.
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Blair is regarded by most people in Britain as a smarmy git.
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I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.
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I've had much nastier things said about me in the British press than in the Bosnian press.
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At the next election he'll offer the British public an alternative that provides weight and substance and seriousness in a political debate that is, frankly, increasingly obsessed with modishness and flim-flam.
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The multinational corporations now developing budgets often bigger than medium-sized countries — these live in a global space which is largely unregulated, not subject to the rule of law, and in which people may act free of constraint.
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The greatest failure is that although we have created institutions, we have not created a civil society.
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The advent of interconnectedness and of weapons of mass destruction means that, increasingly, I share a destiny with my enemy.
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One of the great barriers to peace in the Middle East is that both sides, both Israel and the Palestinians, do not understand that they share a collective destiny.
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Now we are intimately locked together. You get swine flu in Mexico it’s a problem for Charles de Gaulle Airport 24 hours later. Lehman Brothers goes down the whole lot collapses. There are fires in the steppes of Russia food riots in Africa.
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There can be no place in a 21st-century parliament for people with 15th-century titles upholding 19th-century prejudices.
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Politics is about putting yourself in a state of grace.
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The United States will remain the most powerful nation on Earth for the next 10, 15 years, but the context in which she holds her power has now radically altered.
Paddy Ashdown