They did not emerge peacefully from the womb of philosophical or legal argument. They were secured by political action and debate.

But they [Human rights] are not the only rights that sustain the bonds of the United Kingdom's public realm. Supplementing them are more specifically British rights, such as the right to strike; the right to free health care; the right to safe working conditions; the right to equal pay for equal work; and the right t free primary and secondary education. Most of these British rights have foreign analogues but that does not detract from their British origins. They did not emerge peacefully from the womb of philosophical or legal argument. They were secured by political action and debate. .... [The Public Realm] is a gift of history, precious but also vulnerable. We, and not just remote elites, are responsible for its health; it is up to us to make sure it survives and prospers. We demean ourselves if we try to shuffle off the primordial responsibility onto others.

D. Marquand, Mammon's Kingdom (2014), 97-98

What follows (p. 103-109) is excellent on the history.

Was there really no one in the White House or No. 10 Downing Street who remembered Kipling?

However, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are the the grossest examples of what presentism mean in practice. No one with any knowledge of the murky manoeuvres that carved what is now Iraq out of the defeated Ottoman Empire after the First World War could possibly have thought it a good idea to try, by force of arms, to turn that artificial, riven state into a beacon of democracy for the Middle East. No one who had studied the defeats inflicted on British forces in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century would willingly have dispatched troops, with no knowledge of the local languages and culture, to that harsh terrain with its warrior ethos. Was there really no one in the White House or No. 10 Downing Street who remembered Kipling?

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
and the women come out to cut up what remains,
jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
and go to your gawd like a soldier.

D. Marquand, Mammon's Kingdom (2014), 66

Personally, I find it comforting that some people also base their opposition to Iraq and Afhganistan on  practical grounds rather than the absurdity of UN sanctioned international law.

All that happened was that new elites, most of whom had little or no sense of public duty, took their place

The fall of the old elites did not usher in a non-elitist nirvana. All that happened was that new elites, most of whom had little or no sense of public duty, took their place. Money and celebrity became society's chief yardsticks of merit and achievement, endlessly celebrated by gawking media.

D. Marquand, Mammon's Kingdom (2014), 58

The Golitsyns were in fact not descendants of Riurik, the mythic founder of the first Russian state, but of Gedymin, a fourteenth century grand prince of Lithuania

He aid they knew all about Sergei, that he was a strident monarchist and fascist, and he called him "Prince Riurik, a class enemy, a foe of Soviet power." (Here Sergei, unwisely, pointed out that the Golitsyns were in fact not descendants of Riurik, the mythic founder of the first Russian state, but of Gedymin, a fourteenth century grand prince of Lithuania. The stunned interrogator found this elucidation neither helpful or to the point.)

D. Smith,  Former People (2012), 288

This did not necessarily mean she could work with old Slavic manuscripts

If, to paraphrase Lenin, the government administration was to become so orderly and well organised that even a cook could run the state, this did not necessarily mean she could work with old Slavic manuscripts ... [and] catalog [sic] books in every European language

D. Smith,  Former People (2012), 259

The sepoy councils resemble those juntas of young officers who seize power in modern states

The sepoy councils resemble those juntas of young officers who seize power in modern states. This is what national revolt often looks like. Just because the uprising is led by soldiers rather than by progressive intellectuals lately returned from the LSE or the London Inns of count, it does not mean that it does not have the seeds of modernity in it. It certainly cannot  be written off as a cry of rage against the modern world

F. Mount, The tears of the Rajas (2015), 581

He believed in 'socialism in one country', as long as it wasn't his own

Charles was a whiggish improving sort, who yearned to expropriate the landlords in favour of the true proprietors, the peasants who actually tilled the soil. Like many other modernizers, and there were plenty of them in India in the 1980s and 1840s, he would not have dreamed of applying these radical nostrums to England. He believed  in 'socialism in one country', as long as it wasn't his own.

F. Mount, The tears of the Rajas (2015), 398