All prime ministers start out the same. On those steps of No. 10, the morning after their election, telling us how they will use their new power to make this a better country. To right the wrongs of their predecessors. To do things differently.
But they will also be aware of the old maxim that has stood the test of time: all political careers end in failure.
That’s not as bleak as it sounds. Sometimes it is noble to fail.
Hitler boasted that Dunkirk was a massive defeat for the Allied forces, but history records the evacuation as a triumph of the human spirit.
And so it was. The skippers of those little boats who rescued a seemingly doomed army remain heroes 80 years later.
And in the end, what matters most to every prime minister, however powerful they may have been in their heyday, is something over which they have no influence: that verdict of history.
Boris Johnson would be less than human if he were not contemplating that this weekend. He may or may not regard his days in Downing Street as numbered, but what he must surely fear as a student of Classics is that his tenure will be seen not as a Greek tragedy, but as a Greek farce.
And he will get little comfort if he looks even to those predecessors who’ve made the greatest recent impact.
Winston Churchill, the prime minister who led us to victory in 1945, was dumped by that same grateful nation at the first opportunity. They chose a Labour government that promised to build a new land for the returning heroes.
But Churchill’s place in history was at least secure.
So it was for Margaret Thatcher.
She was dumped by her own party — the one she had led to resounding victories at one election after another — but not before she had transformed the economy by seeing off what she viewed as the over-mighty trade unions.
Then Tony Blair won more elections than any other Labour leader in history.
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