Benjamin Disraeli, a strange Prime Minister
On December 21st, 1804, was born a man destined to become one of Britain's strangest Prime Ministers. This was Benjamin Disraeli. His background was ordinary, middle class, though he later romanticized it. Born and raised initially Jewish, his father renounced Judaism after a dispute with his synagogue, converted to Christianity, and had all four of his children baptized as Anglicans when young Benjamin was 12. This opened up the possibility of a political career, since Jews could not at that time take the Christian oath of allegiance without converting, at least nominally. In his 20th year, Disraeli changed the spelling of his name from D'Israeli to Disraeli.
As an MP, Disraeli was extrovert, even flashy. At times he wore white kid gloves with rings outside them. He was drawn to glamour and glitter, and loved celebrity. He wrote novels, including his famous political novels. In which his ideas were expressed by fictional characters.
Initially in Parliament he backed the landowning aristocrats in opposing Robert Peel's attempt to open the country to cheap imports by repealing the Corn Laws, laws which protected the incomes of the landowning classes. When the laws were repealed, Disraeli helped bring down Peel and split the party. When he later became first Chancellor, then Prime Minister, however, he refused to repeal them.
In office he followed Peel's policy of bidding for the support of voters newly-enfranchised by electoral reforms. He enacted measures to protect and assist workers, often in opposition to the merchant and manufacturing class who found Gladstone's Liberals more to their political taste. It was the age-old combination of king and peasants versus the barons that he was constructing, only in this case it was Tories and workers versus bosses.
Disraeli lowered taxes on malt to lower the cost of the workers' beer, and refused to reimpose the Corn Laws when efficient transatlantic freight, enabled by newly-efficient steam engines, brought in cheap harvests from the American mid-west. He passed Acts to support public health and education, and to enable low-cost housing to be built. He called it a "One Nation" policy, but it more resembled class politics designed to give his party a sold base among the new voters.
The icing on top of his cake was imperialism, hugely popular among the working classes. They might come low in the national pecking order, but they took immense pride in being members of the world's mightiest empire. Queen Victoria liked it, too, and preferred Disraeli to the somewhat cold and stern Gladstone. "She liked flattery," said Disraeli, "and I laid it on with a trowel."
There is a parallel with recent UK events, in that the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, seems to be forming a similar coalition, bidding for support in what were once the Labour heartlands of the Northern and Midland working classes. Like Disraeli, he appeals to the basic patriotism they embrace. His message is one of an independent and proud Britain that stands up to bullying and threats from overseas.
Whether Johnson will be as successful as Disraeli in forging and maintaining that coalition against the bubble politics of the urban and academic elite, as Disraeli did against the merchants and manufacturers, remains to be seen. As ever, time will tell, though the early portents look promising.