One of my favourite historical quotes

Joseph Chamberlain, on launching his campaign for imperial preference, to the chief whip of the opposition party:

You may burn your pamphlets: we are going to talk about something else.

His point? If you have power and a soapbox, you can shift what political debate is about to the issues you want to debate. The tragedy so often is either people forlornly attempting to do that without the power to make a success of it or – even worse – those with the power to do that squandering it and letting the opportunity slip away.