Mr Flight is a throwback to the age of representative democracy

Jim Callaghan, who died last Saturday, was the last British prime minister in the commonly accepted sense of the word. After him several factors — the degradation of the Gladstonian idea of a disinterested Civil Service, the collapse of Parliament, the emergence of a professional political elite and the rise of the media class were four of the most important — irrevocably changed the nature of the post.

In other words Jim Callaghan was the last prime minister from the long age of representative democracy in Britain, which stretched roughly from 1867, the date of the Second Reform Act, till the general election of 1979 and the emergence of Margaret Thatcher as a presidential type of political leader.

Before 1867 Britain was governed by an aristocracy. From 1979 onwards we uneasily started to feel our way towards the new era of manipulative populism, the phrase which best describes today’s system of government, though its nature and consequences have yet to be fully worked out and understood.