Whether it is a matter for nostalgia, comfort or reassurance, one point is worth remembering, and even when Tories lose sight of it wise Labour supporters never forget it. The Conservative party is the most formidable electoral machine in all history. Its ascent to that eminence was rarely trouble-free. In 1832, the party opposed the Great Reform Bill, with an obvious risk of being marginalised and declining into a Carlist rump. Robert Peel had other ideas. The Corn Laws came along to impede his progress. He could have coped, but for Disraeli. That mountebank kept the party out of power for twenty years, before steering it in the right direction. Was that inadvertence, opportunism – or prescience? We shall never know.
Government of self service
Sue Gray’s been revealed to have the highest ever special adviser salary in the history of special advisers
