The Spectator’s Notes | 16 January 2010

At the turn of the year, William Hague, launching the new round of election campaigning, told an interviewer that David Cameron was the sanest party leader whom he had ever met. He has unintentionally put his finger on the only thing that is wrong with Mr Cameron. Most of us regard sanity as an unqualified benefit, and Mr Cameron certainly has that reassuring quality. His character seems rather like the snow in ‘Good King Wenceslas’ — deep and crisp and even. The problem, though, is that politics requires some sort of insanity, especially when there is a crisis, as there is now. The political leader’s belief that he or she (I’ll come to her) can save the nation is a form of madness, but a necessary form. Churchill, De Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher were not what is ordinarily meant by sane. Leaders at such times have to be able to defy the impossibility of events — financial collapse, war etc — and also to eschew sensible advice on the grounds that only they identify with the true yearnings of the voters.