The period between 1688 and the 1740s was roiled by culture wars and economic change as dramatic as our own. Long before today’s keyboard warriors stereotyped their enemies online — either as skinhead flag-shagging gammons or spittle-flecked blue-haired harpies — Grub Street partisans were doing much the same. Instead of mocking lager louts in England shirts, Whig propagandists attacked a target that was, in many ways, the 18th-century equivalent: the ruddy-cheeked fox-hunting squire who made up the backbone of the Tory Party.

Urbane Whig essayist Joseph Addison depicted the average Tory backwoodsman as being a savage boor with a passion chiefly for dogs, inebriation and xenophobia. He was depicted as a bluff, insular patriot hostile to travel (good only to teach a man how to “jabber French”) and foreigners, whom, he splutters, “will never be loved in England”. With Addison presenting the squire as a half-educated gout-ridden oaf, it’s not far off those online progressives sneering at the “Raise the Flag” movement today.

Such political caricatures, then as now, were rooted in the passionate hatreds inspired by both cultural divides and clashes of economic interests in a time of disorientating change.

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The Tories had, in the period following the Glorious Revolution, become classic provincial “populists”. Their base — the staunchly Anglican landed gentry and their rural dependents — not only despised the Whigs for being the defenders of their religious enemies, the more radical Protestant Dissenters outside the Church of England, but also for material reasons. The Whigs, partisans of the new Dutch King William III, supported their new master’s expensive wars with France, wars which gave rise to higher taxes, rising state debt, and a new web of corrupt state clients in the form of government contractors, “stock-jobbers” and army officers. The cost of all this fell disproportionately on the Tory squires while a new financial elite prospered.

As a result, in the 1690s there was a dramatic political realignment as the old party of state authority and monarchy — the Tories — became the “country” party, hostile to the depredations of the central state. All the while, the old libertarianism of the Whigs faded as they became the party of a new, courtly “progressive establishment”.

The parallel with now is obvious. Just as the triumph of post-revolutionary Whiggery created fresh culturally inflected classes of economic winners (financiers, speculators) and losers (the rural gentry and their tenants), globalization over the past 30 years has created urban-progressive economic beneficiaries and provincial small “c” conservative economic casualties. Back then, Tories and Whigs clashed on the status of the Church of England and religious toleration, whereas now we debate trans rights and Net Zero. But if these debates are separated by hundreds of years, both nonetheless pitted “rooted” cultural conservatism versus the radicalism of a new “Anywhere” class. Then as now, meanwhile, such bitter divisions also reflect the material resentment that economically “left-behind” groups — the Red Wall and angry farmers now, the gentry interest then — have for their urban, “sophisticated” rivals who benefit from both economic openness and state patronage.

Both periods saw a new division — put crudely, nation and tradition versus international economic entanglements and cosmopolitan openness — replace the old political binary. What matters now as then is a dichotomy between those championing national cohesion, rooted in the ways of the provinces, versus those championing new paths of global dynamism rooted in innovation and “progress”. It’s Tory versus Whig all the way down.

There is, however, one major contrast between the two eras. As the Whigs went from being libertarian opponents of state overreach to defenders of a new economic status quo, one dominated by financial interests, so Labour has gone from being the champions of the provincial working classes to the party of socially liberal cosmopolitan graduates. That political realignment has its limitations for Labour, given urban progressives are always in a minority. But the modern Conservative Party has an even bigger problem: they have not made the “populist” transition that their ancestors did. Married to a world of globalization and neoliberalism, thanks to their donor class and backbench Thatcherites, they missed their chance to exploit realignment under Boris Johnson.

This mantle has instead been grasped by Reform. Farage’s revolt against the Blairite state resembles the populist Tory rebellion against the post-Glorious Revolution Whig settlement. Starmer, for his part, looks like a Whig desperate to hold back the tide against the dangers of an insular reactionary neo-Tory backlash. These parallels, in their complexities, hold lessons for both Reform and Labour.

The strength of the appeal of the “country” Tories of the early 18th century was that they combined all the energies of a provincial populist insurgency with a deep sense of tradition. They wanted to dismantle what they saw as illegitimate and alien innovations that were distorting the traditional constitution and endangering liberty — the power of a new breed of financiers and a new class of parasitic state toadies that leeched off the bloated post-revolutionary state — without mostly abandoning the essentials of the post-1688 constitutional settlement. They were genuinely skeptical about the destabilizing implications of incipient financial capitalism, and prepared to countenance major “radical” reforms to ward off its ill effects, while still remaining the party of the church, constitution and squire. In other words, then, the Tories were both profoundly radical and profoundly conservative.

The contrast with Reform seems glaring. Firstly, there is every risk that Reform will be nobbled by the same donor class that rendered the Tories irrelevant, with the power of capital transforming Reform into another appendage of the uniparty. Secondly, elements within Reform appear to be ultra-liberals, albeit of a Right-leaning kind, who want to sweep away the Lords (or perhaps appoint their own cronies to it, Farage isn’t clear) and allow non-parliamentarians to sit in a US-style “cabinet”. They give the impression of skepticism towards a “woke” monarchy and of holding a desire to trash many of our institutions. Either or both of these tendencies may prove far from popular with precisely the marginalized provincial voters Reform is banking on, especially if they win power and the white-hot resentment of voters against the old two established parties fades with time.

This is why the defection of Danny Kruger seems surprising, but perhaps also hopeful. He is, after all, a Tory of the old school: a communitarian Christian and no “Right-Jacobin”. Given all this, he seems well-placed to help Reform negotiate these contradictions and channel the strengths of 18th-century Tory “country” radicalism. That there might also be more than an element of political calculation in the move as Kruger seeks to save his seat is probably true. Principle and pragmatism are, of course, not necessarily enemies, although he might find it a struggle to overcome the very different instincts of men like Richard Tice. We shall see how such a tension plays out.

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Meanwhile, Keir Starmer (or whoever succeeds him) will not avoid being swept away by a provincial populist backlash in the way that the original Whigs did: by the accession of George I, a king more than prepared to rig the political game in the Whigs’ favor. Nonetheless, Starmer might learn a lot from the man who helped secure Whig hegemony back in the early 18th century: Robert Walpole. Walpole wanted the Whig settlement to be truly secure, and he knew that the best way of doing that was to dampen down the deep economic and religious divisions that, when provoked, tended to work against the Whigs and in favor of the Tories.

So Walpole managed his new Whig economic and religious settlement very carefully. He gave the Tories much of what they wanted: he scrupulously avoided foreign wars and entanglements, kept taxes low and left the Church of England mostly alone. He reined in radical elements on his own side — defying his supporters from the ranks of Protestant Dissent who wished to curtail the privileges of the Church of England further — and compromised. In short, the economic and cultural wounds of the preceding generation were given time to heal. Political partisanship certainly didn’t disappear. But the temperature dropped, and Walpole remained in power for 20 relatively stable years.

The same principle could work today. There is no majority in the country for neo-Whig policies of open borders and neoliberal globalization. But Labour could — in theory — do what Walpole did and make his peace with the provincial patriots who otherwise look likely to power Reform to victory. He could give them what they want on immigration, just as Walpole gave the gentry what they wanted on peace. Starmer could also take real steps to assuage the economic pain of the hundreds of small cities and towns decimated by globalization, as Walpole reduced the land tax and bolstered domestic manufacturing. Starmer and Reeves could actually pull some of the economic levers available to the government: an industrial strategy with teeth and resources behind it, capitalizing regional investment banks, and a return to protective tariffs for key industries.

Alas, one fears that Reform will end up as a debased version of the current Tory Party and Labour will be unable to respond in any convincing way to the electoral tsunami that threatens to engulf them. The result could be a never-ending spiral of voter discontent and rising provincial fury. Let’s hope that Starmer and Kruger get mugging up on their 18th-century history, and soon.

At the time, few people could have predicted where Walpole’s appointment would lead. Yet three centuries later, 52 men and two women have followed in his footsteps: charmers and charlatans, moralists and mountebanks, pragmatists and prophets. Today, as Boris Johnson ascends the staircase at 10 Downing Street, their portraits gaze down at him. The calculating stare of William Pitt the Younger; the grim glower of William Gladstone; the bulldog features of Winston Churchill; the icy blue eyes of Margaret Thatcher. A handful of great names, and a host of forgotten ones: the Earl of Bute, Viscount Goderich, the Earl of Derby. Outside the academy, who now recalls Arthur Balfour, Andrew Bonar Law or Sir Alec Douglas-Home? Who still cares about Harold Wilson? Who, realistically, will remember Gordon Brown?

Today, when the premiership seems an indelible feature of the British constitution, it is easy to forget how messily it began. Kings and queens had relied on chief ministers for centuries, and at first there was no sign that Walpole would be any different. Like many later prime ministers, he took the reins at a moment of intense uncertainty. The new Hanoverian dynasty was haunted by the spectre of a French-backed Jacobite rebellion, while the nation’s financial stability was threatened by the fallout from the South Sea Bubble. Europe and the economy: nothing changes.

Since Walpole was the first Prime Minister, and served for almost 21 years, why isn’t he better remembered? One banal reason, I suppose, is that it was such a long time ago. To people not very interested in history, Walpole’s Britain seems impossibly distant. Our first premier was born in 1676, when his oldest neighbours could still remember the last days of Elizabeth I. He lived at a time when Europe’s major ideological division pitted Protestants and Catholics, and when people moved around London in carriages and sedan chairs.

And even much of his own country was a mystery to him. As Anthony Seldon writes in his new history of the British premiership, Walpole never visited Manchester or Bristol, let alone Wales or Scotland. To travel from London to his Norfolk house, Houghton Hall, took at least two days on largely unpaved roads. As MP for King’s Lynn he never faced serious opposition and had little reason to fear the electorate. The only person he really needed to care about was the king — and George could barely speak English. When Walpole visited the palace to discuss affairs of state, they talked in French, and sometimes even in Latin.

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Yet is Walpole really so remote? Despite his calculating intelligence and financial know-how, he cuts an endearingly earthy, flesh-and-blood figure. Another prime ministerial biographer, the journalist Andrew Gimson, notes that Walpole played the part of the country squire to perfection, ostentatiously opening his gamekeeper’s letters before turning to his political paperwork. His mistress, Molly Skerrett, was fully 25 years his junior. Perhaps above all, he was famously, flagrantly corrupt. In his own words, he was “no saint, no spartan, no reformer”. Remind you of anyone?

For those of us who enjoy prime ministerial history, it’s a glorious coincidence that the 300th anniversary of Walpole’s appointment comes with another roistering Old Etonian installed in Number 10. For Gimson, the parallels with Boris Johnson suggest that “we still live in an 18th-century country, a mixture of elegant civilisation and extreme rudeness; earthy, passionate, drunken, reckless, and certainly not in thrall to Victorian values”. Seldon even imagines Walpole and Johnson at a candlelit Downing Street dinner, the two men swapping anecdotes about the frustrations of power, the ghastliness of the French and the pleasures of fine wines, women and money.

All this hints at the fundamental continuity of prime ministerial history. Everything changes, yet the job remains largely the same. The nature of the economy, the structure of international relations, the expectations of the voters, the management of colleagues, the day-to-day business of government, the very warp and weft of political life have been utterly transformed since Walpole’s day. But human nature hasn’t changed. Nor have the arts of making friends and influencing people, of stitching up enemies and rivals, of playing to an audience, of making sure you’re in the right place at the right time. It’s easy to imagine Boris Johnson crashing around the political salons of eighteenth century London, his wig askew over his blond mop, his buttons bursting from all that roast beef. Would he have risen to the top back then? Why not?

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What are the lessons from the last 300 years? Perhaps the most obvious, as Walpole and Johnson would be delighted to agree, is that few successful Prime Minsters have been paragons of virtue. There’s always Gladstone, of course — never happier than when hewing logs, redeeming prostitutes or writing a commentary on Homer. But he was the exception, not the rule. And even in his High Victorian heyday, there were plenty of people who thought him a humbug and a hypocrite.

The truth is that Johnson fits perfectly well into the general run of British Prime Ministers. His critics accuse him of being lazy and dilettantish, as if all his predecessors had been martyrs to their paperwork. Yet one of our most underrated premiers, Herbert Henry Asquith, spent long afternoons playing bridge with pretty girls and was outraged that the advent of the First World War forced him to miss a country house weekend with his adored Venetia Stanley — again, a quarter of a century his junior. Another criminally underestimated Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, was flogged at Harrow for writing amateur pornography, scraped a Third at Cambridge, took legendarily long summer holidays in Aix-les-Bains and was regarded by some of his contemporaries as one of the laziest men they had ever met. Yet Asquith ran the country for almost nine years, Baldwin for seven. Would they have been more popular if they had worked harder? Perhaps we should ask Gordon Brown.

Johnson is also typical in being a natural performer, who loves showing off and playing to the gallery. Bien-pensant intellectuals shudder at this sort of thing, because they think politicians should be like university lecturers, dropping abstract nouns into the dead silence of the seminar room. Yet in reality, successful politicians are almost always entertainers. This was true even in the pre-democratic age, when they needed to perform to the court and the monarch. And most successful modern Prime Ministers have been shameless actors, gleefully pandering to the expectations of their audiences.

Think of Tony Blair, formerly the lead singer of Ugly Rumours. Think of Harold Wilson, hamming it up with a pipe he never smoked offstage. Think of Margaret Thatcher, rarely happier than when donning her overalls to tour a Cadbury’s Creme Egg factory. Or read Christopher Hibbert’s portrait of the ultimate Victorian populist, Benjamin Disraeli, strolling down Regent Street in blue trousers and red-striped stockings, the dyed “black curls carefully arranged in the centre of his forehead, one of his eyelids drooping now, his tired, pale face gently rouged, rings worn over the fingers of his white and lavender gloves”. How Disraeli would have enjoyed appearing on Have I Got News for You!

Disraeli is an excellent example of that supremely British political species, the mountebank. He was a chancer, a trickster, an opportunist, a conman. His only principle was his own self-interest. When he was a young man, Lord Melbourne asked him what he wanted from life. “I want to be Prime Minister,” Disraeli said. Melbourne let out a long sigh, but Disraeli was deadly serious. “If I become half as famous as I intend to be,” he said on another occasion, “I must have riches and power.”

For Lord Salisbury, Disraeli was a “mere political gangster”, without “principles or honesty”. That description applies equally well to other great Downing Street mountebanks, such as the Liberal charlatan, crook and sex pest David Lloyd George. “My supreme idea is to get on,” LG told his wife Margaret. “To this idea I shall sacrifice everything … even love itself under the wheels of my juggernaut if it obstructs the way.” He meant every word. Not content with lining his pockets in the Marconi scandal, he stabbed his own patron, Asquith, in the back, betrayed his party and flogged peerages for cash. Some biographers think LG even slept with his own son’s wife. By those standards, Boris looks positively saintly.

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Any other patterns? Well, here’s one we don’t often talk about. When Prime Ministers arrive in Downing Street, they usually make pious noises about bringing the country together. Even Johnson, after the general election of December 2019, told the cameras that it was “time to unite” and “let the healing begin”. But this is nonsense. You don’t become Prime Minister by uniting and healing; that’s what the Queen is for. To govern is to choose; to choose is to divide. And to divide, by and large, is to win.

Of the handful of truly great Prime Ministers, most were instinctive dividers. Few politicians in our history have been more adored than Gladstone, but few have been so hated, either. Disraeli thought him an “unprincipled maniac … an extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy and superstition”. Clement Attlee called him a “frightful old prig” and a “dreadful person”. Yet Gladstone served four terms as Prime Minister, more than Disraeli and Attlee put together. And what about Margaret Thatcher — another much-loathed divider, but also another record-breaking winner? Would she have done better to search for a middle course, to seek consensus, to duck the difficult decisions? Well, just ask Theresa May.

What’s it all for, though? That’s a more difficult question. Few Prime Ministers make an indelible mark on history; most end up largely forgotten. As Johnson must now realise, you sacrifice your best years, your family, your friends, even your health — and for what? A portrait on the stairs? The opportunity to spend the rest of your life with your bodyguards? The rare privilege of having people shout abuse at you wherever you go?

This, I think, is the unacknowledged truth about the life of a Prime Minister. By and large, it’s awful. Contrary to our adolescent fantasies, fame and success are no defence against the tragedies of the human condition. Asquith lost his eldest son Raymond at the Somme, and arguably never really recovered. His Tory rival Andrew Bonar Law lost two sons in the First World War, too, and spent his final days “despondently gazing into vacancy … obliterating light and happiness”.

And on top of the ordinary miseries of human existence, politics piles troubles of its own. Nobody ever thanks you, nothing you do is right and everything ends in tears. Baldwin, who left office in 1937 with applause ringing in his ears, ended his life as a pariah, the gates of his house spitefully ripped down for wartime scrap. Thatcher was kicked out despite never losing an election. Blair, another serial winner, can barely show his face without people screaming at him about Iraq.

Even Walpole, the man who invented the job, and perhaps the most underestimated Prime Minister in our history, was denied the pleasure of a long and happy retirement. For 20 years he had kept Britain safe, stable and, above all, rich. But in 1742 Parliament turned against him, eager for a leader who would embrace war with Spain. So that was that: out he went.

Walpole lived for just two more years, his days blighted by agonising bladder stones. He died, wrote his son Horace, “very poor”, his estates heavily mortgaged. “His Name will not be recorded in History among the best men, or the best Ministers,” wrote his contemporary Lord Chesterfield. There’s gratitude for you.

Sorry, Boris. You can’t say you haven’t been warned.