This prescription sounds very close to the recommendations of America's top political scholar on Britain, Samuel Beer, in his recent keen affidavit for the Blair government in The Economist (February 7th), who lauds New Labour as a return to the social-liberal spirit of Lloyd George, after the long years in a collectivist wilderness.

ECONOMIST: British politics

His politics were unabashedly liberal, in the spirit of the New Deal.

WSJ: Scholar Argued For Moral Understanding of Law

In the spirit of liberal politics, he thinks the job of Facebook's managers is to create a space in which citizens and firms feel comfortable investing their time and money to create things.

ECONOMIST: Social networks and statehood

Mr Blair's determination to dictate the Scottish Labour Party's tax policy in this situation seems to violate the entire spirit of how his party has, together with the Liberal Democrats and others, proposed that the Edinburgh parliament should operate.

ECONOMIST: Devolution