A few months ago it was alleged that Patrick Mercer the Conservative MP for Newark claimed that David Cameron was the worst politician in British history since William Gladstone. Mr Mercer denied making the comments but even if they were said do they actually have a basis in reality. If we discount what is probably an opinion of the current Prime Minister based on personal animosity, does the argument that William Gladstone was a terrible politician and that David Cameron is the worst politician since the 1890s actually stand-up to scrutiny.
To deal with the argument that David Cameron is the worst politician since the late Victorian era is in some ways difficult, merely due to the fact that he has not reached the end of his career in British politics and therefore any judgement of him would be based on an incomplete picture. However, in just comparing him to previous occupants of No.10 since Gladstone, David Cameron would have to perform truly terribly and make numerous horrendous mistakes in order to match the sheer incompetence and awfulness of Gordon Brown, Anthony Eden, Neville Chamberlain, Edward Heath and Lord Roseberry. Therefore to claim that David Cameron is the worst politician since Gladstone is quite a leap of the imagination when you consider even just the people who have preceded him as Prime Minister let alone some of the dubious characters who have sat as a Member of Parliament in the last 118 years.
To answer the question of whether William Gladstone was a terrible politician the short answer is almost certainly not. This is not to say that he did not have flaws as a politician or as a person because he certainly did, for example he became obsessed with Ireland for the last 25 to30 years of his political career to the detriment of everything else, and by all accounts he was a sanctimonious prig of an individual. Adding to these flaws he almost certainly stayed on as Prime Minister for too long and lost control of his colleagues, his Cabinet and his party and therefore contributed to the destruction of the great Victorian Liberal Party which had dominated British politics for so long.
Nevertheless, Gladstone’s flaws and mistakes were more than outweighed by his achievements both as Chancellor of the Exchequer and as Prime Minister. Firstly, he believed completely in the principle of sound finance and therefore any reforms that he introduced throughout his career in frontline politics were costed and sustainable and therefore provided economic stability and certainty and allowed for long-term planning. Added to this Gladstone led between 1868 and 1874 one of the most successful and reforming governments of all time which helped improve the lives of most of the population of the United Kingdom. Admittedly this administration ran out of steam by the end of its time in office but what it had achieved while in office was pretty monumental and provides an excellent legacy for anyone assessing the reputation of William Gladstone. Finally, and perhaps most crucially William Gladstone was the dominant figure of Victorian politics with a career at or near the head of British public life spanning decades and more importantly he managed to retain a degree of popularity which allowed him and the Liberal Party to dominate politics for most of this period. A record such as that hardly sounds like that of a terrible politician, and therefore the alleged claim of Mr Mercer does not by any measure stand-up to serious scrutiny. William Gladstone was by any general measure a first-rate politician, a brilliant Chancellor of the Exchequer and a very good Prime Minister and if David Cameron emulates even some of the achievements of the ‘People’s William’ then he will be a success.
