Political feuds have always been at the heart of politics. The most public of these have occurred when the adversaries were confronting each other across the floor of the House, leaders of different parties bound by their roles to oppose each other on every occasion even when they had scant belief in the superior merits of their cause. Quite as protracted and often still more embittered were the feuds between two politicians who were in theory colleagues but in practice were locked in ferocious rivalry. Campbell describes only two of the first category — Fox and Pitt and Gladstone and Disraeli — but six of the second — Castlereagh and Canning, Asquith and Lloyd George, Bevan and Gaitskell, Macmillan and Butler, Heath and Thatcher and Blair and Brown. It is perhaps a sign of the way politics have changed that five out of the six feuds between colleagues occurred in the 20th century. Pitt and Fox and Gladstone and Disraeli, however, started in the same party: it was personal rivalry as much as principled conviction which drove them into opposing camps.
None of the protagonists in these feuds is a minnow: Gladstone and Disraeli are the titans. ‘They are unquestionably’, writes Campbell, ‘the two most remarkable personalities who have ever illumined British politics’. One might question the ‘unquestionably’ but certainly their long-drawn-out duel was the most dramatic and — coming as it did at a time when Britain was the world’s greatest power — the most politically significant. And yet they were relatively amicable at first, and even after Disraeli had destroyed Gladstone’s leader, Peel, he still hoped to bring him back into the Conservative fold under Lord Derby. There were issues of principle which divided them, but it was conflicting ambitions and personal animosity which set the two so starkly apart.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.