New year, old politicians. Yesterday’s men will loom large in the politics of 2023.
British politics has a nostalgia problem, often to the benefit of our over-large population of former prime ministers. They may have disappointed in office, but the urge to rose-tint our memories means failure is no bar to a lucrative or influential post-premiership.
How else to explain the £2 million earned by Theresa May since the end of her painful, pedestrian premiership? Her reputation has also been enhanced through the power of hindsight: during the chaos of 2022’s politics, the history of her shambling, stumbling government was quietly rewritten and she became a ‘grown-up’ politician from a lost age of sensibleness.
On the fringes of political conversation, you can even hear the start of a tendency to recast Liz Truss as a bold visionary who got the analysis right but encountered some minor snags when it came to implementing her plans.
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