A letter in the Independent newspaper caught my eye.  This is the best political journalism I’ve read and so it is worth reproducing in full. Mr Payne of Lincoln – we salute you.

It is said that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Once upon a time, long ago, there was a Labour prime minister who was considered to be a slick, unprincipled operator. But he knew how to win elections. Three times he had performed this magic.

One day, quite unexpectedly, he resigned and left the job of prime minister to his heir apparent, a man who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer but, unfortunately, a man who did not know the trick of winning elections.

In his three years in the top job, this new prime minister tried hard to steer the country through a world financial crisis. Realising that he did not have the magic, election winning pixie dust of his predecessor, he was afraid to call an election, so he clung on to power until the last legal moment before he was forced to ask the voters to re-elect him. He lost heavily to the Conservatives, now being led by an energetic, reforming leader.

Soon after the election, the losing prime minister resigned leadership of his party and a new leader was to be chosen. Most of the Labour members of parliament wanted the natural successor to get the job. He was a gifted, intellectually brilliant, experienced, statesmanlike figure who was the only Labour MP actually to be feared by the formidable new prime minister.

As it was, the trade unions used a heavily biased electoral system to make sure that the job went to an unelectable bookish socialist of impeccable left-wing opinions and a complete lack of political streetfighting skills.

After this amiable but unworldly man took office, he found himself regularly outsmarted and ridiculed by his far more competent Tory adversary. So it was not too long before many of his party’s followers deserted him and formed their own gang. And it was to be a further 18 years before the Labour Party found another slick, cunning, political magician who knew the secret of how to bamboozle the people and win three elections.

And the moral of this story about Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher, Healey and Foot? First, it is not possible for a left-wing socialist, backed by union power, ever to become prime minister. And second, now is the time to go down to the bookmaker and put money on David Cameron being re-elected prime minister in 2015.

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