The Real Founder of the Liberal Party

Letters

Vol. 19 No. 20 · 16 October 1997

From Nicholas Faith

In his admirable review of Leslie Mitchell’s new life of Lord Melbourne, Jonathan Parry (LRB, 2 October) describes how another eminent statesman

consciously pitched for a wide coalition of support on the same basis of manly, flexible common sense. He adopted a variety of public poses, disciplined the radicals to accept his leadership by asserting his greater popularity, and made the Conservatives seem marginal and disreputable. He personalised politics, presenting himself as the embodiment of progressive Englishness by cleverly defining progress so narrowly as to be almost unobjectionable, and by forging opportunistic alliances with groups across the political spectrum. He minimised hostility to government by decentralising as many unpopular responsibilities as possible. By such means, he secured dominance for himself and a 20-year hegemony for his followers.

Parry was writing about Lord Palmerston. But did he also have Tony Blair in mind? I think we should be told.

Nicholas Faith
London N7

From Editor, ‘London Review’

The last two sentences of Jonathan Parry’s review, which follow immediately from the passage Nicholas Faith quotes, read: ‘That was how the Liberal Party developed in the 19th century. It is, very probably, how it will be reborn, under another name, at the end of the 20th.’ I would say we had been told, but perhaps I’m clairvoyant.

Editor, ‘London Review’