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Victory, she had once heard someone say, was about ensuring your opponent never again put head to pillow without thinking with hatred on your face.
There was always trouble, and
he always rose from the resulting miasma looking a lovable scamp: lovable, anyway, to that gratifyingly large sector of the populace to whom he’d always be a figure of fun: breathing a bit of the old jolly into politics, and where’s the harm in that, eh?
if his party stood for anything, it was for defending the right of the strong to flourish, which meant preventing the weak from taking up unnecessary space. Slough
drain rod.”
That a delicacy for the pampered was acquired through brutality was hardly news. By any civilised standard, it was how luxury ought to be measured—wealth meant nothing if it didn’t create suffering. Because the standard liberal whine that the rich were cushioned from life’s harsh realities was laughable ignorance: the rich created those realities, and made sure they kept on happening. That was what kitchens were for, along with prisons, factories and public transport.
the powerful, took messy violence in their stride—it was the cost of doing business—which
Disloyalty was the one political sin you couldn’t survive being discovered committing; though of course, without it, your career would be one long tug at your forelock. That’s what made public life such a balancing act. Which, let’s face it, was why it was so exhilarating.
