The next prime minister will be the wrong age for the job, by which I don’t mean lacking the necessary experience, although that may also be true. I mean roughly the same age as me. It was bound to happen. I am used to babyfaced police officers and teachers who don’t look old enough to have left school. Seeing one of my peers in Downing Street was, quite literally, a matter of time. There is nothing freakish about fortysomething prime ministers. David Cameron was 43 when he took the top job. I was 36 when he became prime minister, not a spring chicken, but springier than politics makes me feel today.
Tony Blair was also 43 when he came to power 25 years ago. Take 25 from 1997 and you land in 1972, before either of today’s Tory leadership contenders was born. When Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss perform their Margaret Thatcher karaoke tribute acts, they are dancing to a tune that is as pertinent to the challenges Britain faces today as the Suez crisis was to New Labour. That isn’t to say the past is irrelevant. But history should inform the present, not hold it hostage.
