Boris Johnson, record-breaker

The latest addition to my bookshelf is Gimson's Prime Ministers: Brief Lives from Walpole to May. It is very readable, includes all the best-known aphorisms associated with PMs (along with warnings about the most shaky attributions) and looks like being a handy quick reference in the future. Gimson does not pretend to great depth in his short portrayals, but even so I believe he could have given more weight to the social reforms of Attlee, Lloyd George and Churchill. Gimson clearly writes from a Tory perspective.

I am grateful for the information that it was Stanley Baldwin who coined the term "One Nation Conservatism", inspired by the Disraelian observation that Britain consisted of two nations. However, I continue to believe Anthony Sampson's assertion that Iain Macleod was the first politician to describe himself as a "One Nation Tory".

I agree with Gimson's praise of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) but would correct him on one point: it is accessible online to the card-carrying public library user only if his or her local authority subscribes to the ODNB. Neath Port Talbot CBC, which rates public libraries below sporting facilities in its officer hierarchy, gave up subscribing many years ago, much to my annoyance.

Gimson would probably have regretted ending his survey with Mrs May who, in spite of the gloss of "strong and stable" leadership, was to fall within months of publication. In his introduction, Gimson asserts that "someone like Donald Trump could not get to 10 Downing Street". Boris Johnson (about whom Gimson has also written a book) has done just that. Johnson has broken two more records. The only other prime minister to have been born outside the UK was Bonar Law, and  until his occupancy, the only PM to have been divorced while in office was the Duke of Grafton who achieved this by Act of Parliament - the only legal means to end a consummated marriage in 1769. One trusts that a further record, that of Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the only PM to die in Downing Street (though he had already written a letter of resignation), will not be broken in spite of the news that broke on Thursday of Johnson's succumbing to a mild attack of Covid-19.

updated 2020-03-31