"It's been fascinating watching all those pictures of me with a lot more hair Jeremy, and looking very young. And we've all got things we've said, twenty, thirty years ago, indeed the whole world has changed since then"
About this Quote
Self-deprecation is doing the diplomatic heavy lifting here. Hain opens with the disarming image-politics of aging: old photos, thicker hair, a younger face. It’s a joke with a purpose. By inviting the audience to laugh with him, he lowers the temperature before the real point lands: the archive exists, and it’s coming for everyone.
The line about “things we’ve said, twenty, thirty years ago” is a careful widening of responsibility. Hain isn’t only speaking about himself; he’s building a collective alibi. The move is rhetorically savvy: if everyone has a past, then the scandal logic of dredged-up quotes becomes less about moral clarity and more about changing norms, changing contexts, changing incentives. He’s not exactly apologizing, but he is pre-empting the prosecution’s tone by reframing the trial as a sociology lecture.
Then comes the pivot: “indeed the whole world has changed since then.” That “indeed” matters. It suggests inevitability, the idea that holding past statements to present standards can be less justice than anachronism. Yet it also smuggles in a softer claim: if the world changed, a politician can claim the right to have changed with it without admitting they were wrong at the time.
Contextually, this fits the modern political condition: permanent documentation, instant retrieval, and a public that treats consistency as virtue until it prefers evolution as proof of growth. Hain’s intent is to claim the latter without letting the former become a weapon.
The line about “things we’ve said, twenty, thirty years ago” is a careful widening of responsibility. Hain isn’t only speaking about himself; he’s building a collective alibi. The move is rhetorically savvy: if everyone has a past, then the scandal logic of dredged-up quotes becomes less about moral clarity and more about changing norms, changing contexts, changing incentives. He’s not exactly apologizing, but he is pre-empting the prosecution’s tone by reframing the trial as a sociology lecture.
Then comes the pivot: “indeed the whole world has changed since then.” That “indeed” matters. It suggests inevitability, the idea that holding past statements to present standards can be less justice than anachronism. Yet it also smuggles in a softer claim: if the world changed, a politician can claim the right to have changed with it without admitting they were wrong at the time.
Contextually, this fits the modern political condition: permanent documentation, instant retrieval, and a public that treats consistency as virtue until it prefers evolution as proof of growth. Hain’s intent is to claim the latter without letting the former become a weapon.
Quote Details
| Topic | Nostalgia |
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