Prime Ministerial, from the New Statesman | John Major
Daily Politics from the New Statesman
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The Importance of Listening and Understanding in Politics
I think you're right in your question that Thatcher was the aberration, and normally in our system, we're not very big on philosophy and ideology. So I don't think there was a kind of sense of intellectual inferiority because it had reverted much more to traditional British government approaches which are sort of pragmatic. He is someone with emotional intelligence, so getting inside other people's heads, how they think, behave,. recognizing actually that most people in politics were insecure. listening, understanding, empathizing actually works better in European politics than hectoring.
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