Disraeli reminds me of who?

In the Daily Mail on 6 October, the historian Dominic Sandbrook set out to explain how inappropriate it was for Ed Miliband in his Labour Party Conference speech to attempt to annex Disraeli and his ‘One nation’. The Mail subeditors, rarely inclined to terseness, headlined the piece Red Ed’s One Nation hero was a vacuous, egotistical hypocrite who sent British soldiers to die needlessly in foreign wars. (Remind you of anyone?). This was presumably intended to point the reader in the direction of Tony Blair. However Sandbrook had a different target, offering a scathing rejection of Disraeli the man and of ‘One Nation’ and obviously admiring his rival, Gladstone:

… the One Nation slogan is merely an excuse for woolly, weedy, do-nothing politics. As the Labour firebrand Michael Foot once sagely remarked, if you sit in the middle of the road long enough, eventually you will be run over. So if I were David Cameron next week, I would not bother trying to reclaim Disraeli. Instead, I would proclaim my attachment to a far greater Victorian politician: the Liberal statesman William Gladstone. Given that he is already in bed with the Lib Dems, Mr Cameron might shudder at the thought of invoking a Liberal hero. But he would be in good company: no less a figure than Mrs Thatcher, after all, once told her conference that ‘if Mr Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party’. Although Gladstone and Disraeli are forever associated in the public imagination, they could hardly have been more different. Disraeli was funnier, more flamboyant and more dashing. But on almost every count that actually matters, Gladstone was far superior. He was a more convinced reformer, a more imaginative chancellor and a dedicated public servant who genuinely cared about the plight of the poor.

On the way to this conclusion Disraeli’s shortcomings were made clear:

He was a brilliant speaker, an accomplished novelist and a flamboyant showman.  

At bottom, Benjamin Disraeli was interested only in Benjamin Disraeli. His entire political career was devoted to his own advancement; it is not for nothing that he famously boasted of having climbed ‘to the top of the greasy pole’.  

As a young man in the 1830s, he tried to make his name as a novelist. But when money and fame were slow to materialise, he decided on politics instead.  

It was entirely typical of his cynical style, though, that once the Corn Laws had bitten the dust, he made no effort to restore them. Throughout his career, he saw principle as subordinate to tactical self-interest.  

Indeed, it is telling that like those other shameless mountebanks David Lloyd George and Tony Blair, Disraeli loved the glamour and intrigue of military adventures abroad.  

It was little wonder his critics thought Disraeli represented all that was worst about imperialism. But the truth was that, in the absence of any concrete policies or principles, he instinctively fell back on the basest jingoism. In 1876, he even conferred on Queen Victoria the title of Empress of India, to the outrage of commentators who objected that such tawdry baubles were basically un-British. It was pure Disraeli: eye-catching, vainglorious, utterly without shame and ultimately demeaning to all concerned. For Professor Parry [Disraeli’s most recent biographer, the eminent Cambridge historian Jon Parry], Disraeli’s fundamental quality was his ‘astonishing egotism’.  

And his personal life, which was full of affairs, fell a long way short of Ed Miliband’s conspicuous uxoriousness. When Disraeli died in 1881, Gladstone nicely summed him up as ‘all show and no substance’.

The politician this description brought into my mind certainly wasn’t Ed Miliband, or David Cameron, or Tony Blair. I'm afraid it was Boris Johnson!

What’s in a PM’s name?

The 2010 Coalition has now reached the halfway point of its existence, and there is, as yet, no significantly good news about the economy. The Conservatives have decided to move onto different ground and attempt to convince the electorate that Ed Miliband lacks the qualities perceived as being required of a Prime Minister. This was, according to the Financial Times (£), a stratagem decided on at Chequers on 17 September, and, according to the Guardian, encouraged by private opinion polling. So, never slow off the mark, Boris Johnson delivered an attack in the Daily Telegraph on 1 October which was ad hominem to start with:

... a total disappointment; and as leader of a major political party, he looks to me like a drip of the first order. According to yesterday’s YouGov, the Tories are only five points behind Labour — a measly five points, in the depths of what has been the longest and deepest recession many people can remember, when George Osborne is accused of slashing public services, and when many families have experienced a real deterioration in their standard of living. When Neil Kinnock was doing Ed’s job in the early Nineties, he managed to go about 24 points clear of John Major — and he still lost. What is wrong with Ed? The Tory strategists say it is all about his look, his manner, a certain teenage gawkiness compared to Dave’s look of Regency confidence; and that is certainly borne out by the polls. Dave wins big on who the voters both want to be PM – and, crucially, who they think will be PM.

and then goes on to policies:

Elections in this country, especially general elections, are not just about personalities. They are about programmes, about where you want to take the country, and it is here that Ed is getting it hopelessly wrong. Some Labour top brass accuse him of a do-nothing strategy, of trying to sneak into Downing Street with an exhibition of masterly inactivity. If only that were true. In so far as he has done anything with the Labour Party since taking over from Gordon Brown, Ed has moved it to the Left. He is back in the pocket of the union barons, .. etc etc

Johnson optimistically concludes:

Over the next two and a half years the most likely political outcome is surely this: that the economy will steadily recover, and the signs of hope that we are now seeing will multiply. After enduring a long period of unpopularity, during which they did difficult but sensible things, the Conservatives will be rewarded for their patience. I have said it once and I say it again. David Cameron will be returned with a thumping majority in 2015.

Paul Goodman (a former Tory MP and executive editor of Conservative Home) explained in the FT on 1 October that the Tories have a trump card in the form of Ed Miliband. He doesn’t see Miliband’s leftwardness as a problem, in fact

“Mr Miliband is safe to continue criticising capitalism if he closes down his risks on tax and spend by choosing to tax something unpopular, like utilities. But not to worry: … these gathering clouds have a silver lining for the Tories – namely, the personality of the Labour leader himself. The poll ratings of the two main party leaders convey a clear message: better strong and smug (Mr Cameron) than weak and weird (Mr Miliband). Leader ratings aren’t always decisive in elections; Lady Thatcher was less popular than Jim Callaghan in 1979. However, they matter, and Mr Miliband’s biggest problem, like that of the Tories, is less one of policy than of people. Or rather of one person. Himself.

Whether the Tories' tactic will pay off or whether, as C4News’ Gary Gibbon suggests, Miliband will be trained to subdue his professorial geekiness and mannerisms at least enough to disarm the voters, we shall see, particularly when at the pre-election TV debates. But there is one aspect of Miliband that can be put into some sort of historical context now: his surname.

I remember reading, but regrettably cannot now source, a report that after the death of their father, Ralph, David and Ed Miliband were the only adults with that surname (other than their mother and wives who acquired it by marriage). It certainly is unusual, much more unusual than those of nearly all British prime ministers in the last 200 years. From Guardian and Wikipedia data, it can be seen that 34 different men and one woman have been Prime Minister since 1812. I have classified their surnames under four headings:

16 English Common - as seen every day on the side of lorries and vans eg Robinson, Russell, Wilson

 8 English Uncommon – but not unsettling for the average voter eg Wellesley, Primrose, Asquith, Attlee

10 Scottish, Welsh, Irish – eg Balfour, Macmillan, Cameron (but not Brown)

 1 Exotic – Disraeli

(There were four PMs with hyphenated surnames, three of them Scottish; Gascoyne-Cecil has been put in English Uncommon; the unhyphenated Bonar Law again is Scottish.)

In 2015 Miliband would be only the second PM in over two hundred years with an Exotic surname. In his day Disraeli only had to satisfy a small and relatively sophisticated franchise. Since 1930, essentially the start of the modern franchise, there have been 10 PMs with English surnames, five with Scottish and one Irish (Callaghan).  But so what in 2015?  After all, the 21st century may, for all we know, see an Umunna, Patel or Singh in Number 10.

 ADDENDUM 2 OCTOBER

In his speech to the Labour Party Conference today, Miliband mentioned Disraeli five times (and "One Nation" 46 times).  He also said:

My conviction is rooted in my family’s story, a story that starts 1,000 miles from here, because the Miliband’s haven’t sat under the same oak tree for the last five hundred years. Both of my parents’ came to Britain as immigrants, Jewish refugees from the Nazis. I know I would not be standing on this stage today without the compassion and tolerance of our great country. Great Britain.

I'm not sure the oak tree remark was very sensible; it may come back to haunt him.