History For Politicians of Today | Rory Stewart MP

History For Politicians of Today | Rory Stewart MP: Perhaps the most striking ‘lesson’ has been how unpopular celebrated people were in their time. Churchill was hated by much of the press, the country, and his own party: when he begged for just fifty to join him in the lobbies calling for rearmament, in 1938, only 3 defied the whips to do so. Gladstone was right to push for Home Rule in Ireland, but destroyed his party, and was vilified, for his attempt. Peel was right about the Corn Laws, about Catholic emancipation, and about foreign policy, but everyone disliked him. They loved Palmerston, who was wrong about everything. Politics is, in part, an art, by which an individual attempts to shape, and be shaped by the imaginations of a particular community, in a particular place, with a particular culture, at a particular time. Its field is human contact, human pride, and human fears. Politicians are prone to paranoia and megalomania, to amnesia, to irresponsibility. These are not things which can be overcome through economics, through political science, and central plans. Perhaps they can never be overcome. But they are things which are best understood, and in some measure addressed, through a knowledge of history.