November, 1879.  A 70-year-old veteran politician, who many thought finished, looked from a platform upon a crowd of agricultural workers and coal miners in Scotland’s central belt. William Ewart Gladstone declared, “you may sympathize with one nation more than another, but all are equal and you have no right to set up a system under which one of them is to be placed under moral suspicion or espionage, or to be made the constant subject of invective.”
By Jehad Mustafa, Barrister and Volterra Fietta lawyer
Today, it seems incredible that one of the great British Prime Ministers achieved his political comeback by giving speeches on international relations.  But Gladstone’s defence of the international order was a cornerstone of his groundbreaking “Midlothian Campaign”.  It was a success, a...