A quote from David Goodhart in The Spectator, 23 September 2005

The uncomfortable truth to many progressives — and something which the universalism of the Human Rights Act sometimes blurs — is that the modern nation state is based not on a universalist liberalism but on a contractual idea of club membership. This is neither arbitrary nor capricious. If we did not exclude most of the rest of humanity from those national rights and duties, they would very quickly become worthless, especially those welfare rights with a financial cost attached to them that people on the Left value so highly.