The statecraft of Davela Merkeron

WHILE wandering in the Peloponnesian countryside, Philopoemen, an Achaean general, would gesture to folds in the landscape and ask his friends: “If the enemy should be upon that hill, and we should find ourselves here with our army, with whom would be the advantage?” Machiavelli cites this in “The Prince”, his treatise on power, to support his argument that a leader should remain on a war footing during peacetime. Without acting as if an enemy is always over the next hill, he argues, the prince will lose the discipline and loyalty of his sergeants and people. He will lose his edge.

Bagehot commends the example to David Cameron, whose Conservative party is without significant external foe. On August 25th a poll by ComRes put it on 42%, its best result since 2010. The Labour Party is tearing itself apart and will imminently make Jeremy Corbyn, an unelectable albatross, its leader. Even the right-populists of UKIP are mired in infighting. For the first time in his decade-old leadership of the Tories, Mr Cameron is experiencing something that only two other recent prime ministers (Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair) have known: hegemony.