Everyone enjoys making and perusing lists of ‘greatest’ — nineteenth-century novels, Beatles LPs, generals, opening batsmen, and so on. The choices inevitably reflect the compiler’s tastes and prejudices, and are always fun to dispute. I have spent the last few months considering the claims of Britain’s Prime Ministers, a process from which four semi-finalists ultimately emerged.
How to choose? I realized straight away that I had to put personal politics aside. After all, no committed Socialist would include Margaret Thatcher, and no red-blooded Tory would consider Clement Attlee. Yet both would make most objective observers’ lists. Sadly, I also had to disregard some favourite characters. If you wanted an engaging dinner party guest or a companion for a night on the town, then Disraeli or Palmerston would both fill the bill admirably — but neither made the final cut. Others were easier to exclude: Derby, Rosebery, Balfour, MacDonald, Chamberlain and Douglas-Home (to name but some of the duds) never even came into consideration.
In order to compare like with like (difficult enough, in all conscience), I decided to draw the starting line at 1832, the year of the Great Reform Act, before which time politics and the job of Prime Minister were almost unrecognizable by modern standards.
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