THE IMPOSSIBLE OFFICE?

THE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER

ANTHONY SELDON

Cambridge University Press, 430pp, £19.99 British prime ministers ‘struggle to set their agendas and realise their goals’, wrote Andrew Rawnsley in the

Observer. ‘They come to office with their big dreams only to find that most of them crumble to dust. They try to make things happen by yanking at the levers of state, then complain that the controls are made of rubber.’ Seldon and his co-authors have produced ‘an intelligent and insightful account of the evolution of the role’, but ‘the notion that it has got harder to be the tenant of Number 10 is surely influenced by a recent run of occupants of the office who have been unsuited to it... No, it is not an impossible job. Just a bloody difficult one that demands a wide spectrum of skills, the full set of which are possessed by very few people.’ As Ian Cawood in the TLS wrote, ‘Seldon’s book does make one wish that we could have some better [prime ministers].’

Parliamentary sketch-writer Quentin Letts, reviewing it for the

Times, noted that of the ‘seven prime minister skills’ the authors identify, five are positive — persuasion, oratory, energy, intellect, temperament – and only two (ruthlessness and opportunism) less estimable. ‘What happened to lying, flattery, corruption, greed, anger, animal drive?’ he asked.

‘Seldon and his co-authors are historians and operate within the rails of documentary evidence, complete with repeated use of the dismal present-historical tense. For a more vivid guide to political character we must turn to literature – Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, say... Johnson once compared MPS to wasps in a jam-jar, or rugby players waiting for the ball to squirt out of a scrum. Seldon is keener on administrative tidiness: he wants the position of deputy PM formalised and he longs for stronger civil service structures.’