The Great Churchillian Lesson

The great lesson is the Churchillian one of "greater" Anglo-Saxon unity in the name of sanity, decency and the future against insanity, indecency and destruction. The question of whether our epicentre ought to be Washington, London or elsewhere is grotesquely pointless and misplaced.

There inevitably and perpetually will be differences of flavour, currency and fashion among the members of our greatest and most important of Clubs. Let us never forget, however, the ties of blood, spirit and conviction that not only bind us but which animate our indomitable spirit of freedom and of its vigorous defence. Our great common legacy is that of Washington and Pitt; Lincoln and Palmerston, Disraeli, Lee and Grant; Wilson and Lloyd George, Borden, Smuts and Hughes; of Roosevelt, Churchill, Mackenzie King and Curtin; of Kennedy, De Gaulle, Brandt and Meir (stretching the definition of "anglo-saxon" here); of Reagan, Thatcher, Mitterand and Kohl (stretching the definition again); of Bush, Blair, Harper and Howard.

The legacy we all share is our willingness to call both evil and truth by their names, and to do likewise with a lie - and to stand in defence of truth and of freedom, and be ready to destroy evil and lies, whatever the cost - for the simple truth that we understand that we cannot live in a world in which evil, lies, slavery and our enemies flourish.

Against our commonalities, our differences are as trivial as they come.

Walsingham