Prime Ministers are usually the very last to realise their time is up. Thatcher, Blair and May were all forced out by long-running coups. Major and Brown were despatched by electorates. David Cameron is alone in recent times for reading the political runes and getting out ahead of the inevitable firing squad.
None of this should surprise us. Prime ministers are supremely competitive beings and imbued with a grossly over-inflated sense of their own immortality. Which is why they make it to prime minister and we don’t.
