Copying Farage and Polanski Is the Road to Political Oblivion

As John Major came to the lectern to deliver the annual Attlee Foundation Lecture in London recently, he acknowledged the incongruity of a Conservative ex-prime minister offering up a paean to the man whose legacy is honored at the event. Clement Attlee is considered Labour’s greatest occupant of 10 Downing Street.

“Of course, were he and I both active in politics today there would be differences of policy, of priority, of philosophy. We are political opponents. But mark this: Opponents, yes. Enemies, no.” What’s more, the Tory who helmed the UK for six years in the 1990s, added: “Democratic parties do have enemies in politics, but they are populist insurgents who seek to divide and not unite.”