It must be a sign of getting old, but increasingly I am drawn to the politicians of yesteryear, wondering what happened to the statesmen we had back then. Watching Dominic Sandbrook’s recent TV series on the 1980s, a picture flashed up of the first Thatcher Cabinet. That’s when it first came to me. They had their faults, of course they did, and there was only one woman in the shot, but this white, stale, male line-up was head and shoulders above today’s crew.