Look back at our 53 former prime ministers and most would not stand up to the scrutiny of today’s demanding voters
‘Sidmouth, in many ways, was a dull man. He had no wit and little humour. His private life was decorous to the point of suffocation. His talk was drab and his writing doubly so. A career devoid of panache and eccentricity; responsible, sober and prosaic; may fairly be said to lack the more obvious kind of appeal.’
By the time I came across this description of Henry Addington, Lord Sidmouth, I had been reading about him for hundreds of pages and had hours of reading still to complete. You might fairly ask: how did it come to this?
I’ll tell you how. About two years ago I happened upon a blog post by an American who had just completed the self-imposed task of reading a biography of every US president. I knew immediately I had to do it too. But not on American presidents – on British prime ministers. I decided to read at least one biography of every person who had served as PM.
With the accession of Theresa May, there are now fifty-four people who have achieved the highest post, with an average time in office of five years and four months each. I have read biographies of thirty-three of them.
This is actually rather a harsh calculation. I’ve read two volumes of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher, but can’t include her until I’ve read the third. I’ve read the memoirs of James Callaghan and Tony Blair but have decided that memoirs don’t count. And I don’t think you can include the books on David Cameron yet.
There is one problem. Not every prime minister has a proper biography. I finished reading about Sir Robert Walpole only to discover there wasn’t one about his successor Spencer Compton. I felt like a Dalek whose plan to conquer the world was frustrated by a staircase. For the time being I’ve decided to use the Dictionary of National Biography.
Other questions to settle include: should I read other books too (definitely yes), do I need to read books on people whose biographies I have already read (no) and do I need to read them in order (also no)?
To read them in order would mean being stuck in the Georgian era for an eternity. On the other hand, picking people at random poses the danger that you read all the most obvious people first. I’m worried about being left with a tail end of also-ran PMs like the Dukes of Grafton and Portland, the Earl of Shelburne and Viscount Goderich.
The project also leaves me at the mercy of the quality and length of the biographies. One might ordinarily decide to skip reading about the Earl of Derby upon discovering that the only modern book on him, by Angus Hawkins, consisted of two huge (although also, as it turns out, excellent) volumes. And it was extraordinary to read a substantial biography of George Grenville that was so dry and political that it failed to note that he was one of only two people whose son also served as prime minister (the other being William Pitt).
Has the whole thing been worthwhile so far? Certainly. To start with, it means that I now know the dates of all the prime minsters from 1721. I couldn’t just learn them by rote. Reading the books embedded them in my memory.
Having this grid of dates allows you to place any historical event from then onwards in political context. This proves helpful even when doing something as non-political as visiting the home of Jane Austen (where she lived during the premierships of Spencer Perceval and Lord Liverpool) and understanding what was going on in the world as she was writing. While she was sitting at her little desk Perceval was assassinated and Wellington triumphed at Waterloo.
And there are political examples too. In the lobby of the Houses of Parliament is a statue of Stafford Northcote. Why is this man who never made prime minister in such a prominent place? You can tell from the dates. He died on the Downing Street sofa in 1887 after hearing he was to be removed from the foreign office in a reshuffle. The statue was up in a year. It’s a guilt offering.
The most common question I have been asked since starting is: who is my favourite prime minister? This points to the main historical lesson learnt. The answer really is – many of them and none of them. There is no one person who is consistently right or wrong.
Take the Earl of Derby, three times prime minister (1852, 1858 and 1866) although each time only briefly. Moderate, sane, the creator of the modern Conservative Party, right on voting reform, often correct on social reform and then, just as you are getting to like him, spectacularly wrong on votes for Jews and conditions in Ireland.
Was Gladstone a pompous, windy, self-absorbed nutter or a titan of reform and conscience? Both. Was Disraeli a conman, incompetent and a snob or a creative genius and political miracle worker? Both. Was Asquith an inflexible drunk who was besotted with his mistress when he should have been running the country or a transformative figure who modernised Britain? Both. Was Robert Walpole a crook and a chancer or a statesman who kept Britain at peace? Both.
Lloyd George, bounder and opportunist or great radical leader? Bonar Law, unimaginative minnow or great war leader? The Duke of Newcastle, old fool or master of the patronage system? Both, both, both. The idea that there are simple heroes and villains collapses under the weight of evidence.
As does the idea that politicians were so much better in the past. No, they weren’t. They were less experienced, less in touch, less broad-minded and less accountable. We are much better served now.
Reading the history of prime ministers walks you along a long line of people who were elected to Parliament in their early twenties, hardly visited their constituencies and had little experience of other social classes. They had no way of gauging public opinion and weren’t much interested in doing so, being pretty contemptuous of it.
The idea that we now have politicians who, unlike in the past, do not have experience of ‘the real world’ is actually the opposite of the truth.
There has been one other lesson I wasn’t expecting because it isn’t strictly speaking one about prime ministers. What a tragedy it is to read of young people going to die in wars that appear so insignificant to us now that I (ignorantly) did not even realise that they had happened. War with Sweden, for instance, or battles over the Polish succession.
The great heroes of history seem to be those who have won wars. True successes, however, may be those who managed to avoid fighting them. But I may be wrong. I’ve still got another 21 biographies to go, after all.