"The biggest hole in the Tory battle plan should have been obvious: Whether or not one thinks Brexit is a good idea, it is plainly not about stability, or continuity. It’s potentially the most radical change in U.K. domestic and foreign policy in half a century, a step that will change the daily lives of everyone in this country and that of their children."

"Trump's power has depended on his control over his Make America Great Again movement. And that's why he needs the Bannons of this world to keep pumping the zeal, in permanent campaign mode. But how long is it before the overthrow-the-world stuff that propelled a political insurgency starts to sound like tired regime propaganda uttered by tedious apparatchiks?"

"...[I]t was the globalization of the 1990s, inspired by the neoliberal economics of the 1980s, that pushed the West into a postindustrial phase in the first place, as manufacturing jobs moved to emerging markets. That was great for western shareholders; not so great for western factory workers. The left and right model of political normality started to come apart; 30 years later, we have Brexit, President Trump, and the prospect of Président Le Pen."

"But the statistical approach utterly misses the point. The essence of terrorism is that it is not just any sort of crime. It is a crime against the very fabric of the state, as the timing of the attack on Bastille Day was perhaps intended to emphasize."

"And the fight over Scotland's future will be no less vicious than the fight to come in England, now that the incoherence in the Leave campaign's vision has to be ironed out in the real world. Indeed, the Leave campaign's promises, light on fact, and heavy on fantasy, are inherently contradictory."

"Today's world is a globalized one, and the EU allows the U.K. to operate more effectively in it. That is the basic, real-world argument, to stay in the EU. There is no need to attach to this pragmatic view any grand vision. The EU is flawed, but the U.K.'s relationship with it has been incrementally negotiated, and tailored, over 43 years to the effect that membership is the best vehicle currently on offer for the U.K. to amplify its economic strength in a globalized world."

"...[O]nly economic superpowers or dictatorships can drive foreign policy independently of domestic considerations — and Britain was neither in 1967. America is an economic superpower, but also a democracy, which explains both why foreign policy can be pushed beyond domestic considerations for long periods of time, but also why it can all too suddenly come crashing down."

"...[W]e now know that the notion that regime change leads to a better democratic or a humanitarian outcome is decidedly false. From Iraq, where the West tried a heavy footprint strategy, to Libya, where it opted for a light one, the idea that Europe or the United States can actually execute democratic change by force has been exposed as a fallacy."

"The decision to define those eligible to vote as people living in, rather than also born in, Scotland means that several constituencies are unfairly excluded: Many Scottish soldiers in the British Army have no vote, for example. More broadly, the decision to allow Scottish independence on a simple 50 percent majority vote is inexcusable."

"The UK should not repeat the mistake of committing to open-ended conflict with a vaguely defined enemy that ultimately blurs the very line between war and peace that the use of force is supposed to uphold."