Politics & Power Quote by Dora Russell

A slap delivered with patrician precision: Dora Russell is indicting not just a party, but a posture. The sting comes from the phrase "never yet" - a lifetime of watching Labor flirt with office while refusing to behave like it owns the room. "Taking power" here isn't the ceremonial act of forming a cabinet; it's the willingness to use the machinery of the state to reorder priorities, confront entrenched interests, and make enemies in the places that have always assumed they get the final veto.

The subtext is a class diagnosis. "Second-class citizens" is a brutal metaphor because it frames Labor leaders as people who've internalized their supposed inferiority. Russell is suggesting they govern like guests in someone else's house: careful with the furniture, eager to prove they're "responsible", allergic to the accusation of being radical. That anxiety becomes a political program: managerial caution dressed up as pragmatism.

Context matters. Russell lived through the early rise of the British Labour movement, two world wars, the expansion of the welfare state, and repeated bouts of establishment backlash. In that arc, Labour often entered government under the gaze of the press, the civil service, finance, and the monarchy - institutions that didn't merely disagree, but doubted Labour's legitimacy. Russell's line exposes how power polices itself: you don't need a coup if you can convince the would-be rulers to pre-compromise.

It's also a warning about symbolism. When a labor government acts like it must constantly apologize for governing, it hands cultural authority to its opponents, and that surrender can outlast any single term.