A new study by Anthony Seldon of the office of Prime Minister gives too little credit to the many among its 55 holders whom he dismisses as failures.
This book exemplifies the addiction to indignant moralising which blinds so many political commentators to the true nature of their own country.
Dale’s new volume of brief lives of all 55 Prime Ministers since 1721 brings only some of them to life.
He sought to unite the nation in a moral mission, “a common endeavour”, and to leave Labour with nothing to say.
Progressive commentators and saloon-bar orators are wrong to condemn MPs for finding the national issue hard to settle.
Conservatives ought to know without being told that one cannot just take a glance round the world, see which culture one likes the look of, and graft it onto one’s own.
There has been a tendency to suppose that because Britain’s power has declined in relative terms they must have become totally useless.
The author of the newly-published Gimson’s Prime Ministers: Brief Lives from Walpole to May reflects on what holders of the office have in common – and don’t.
We need to rekindle l’esprit communautaire, on both sides of the channel. In Walpole’s famous phrase, “this dance can no longer go”.