Bill Cash on John Bright  

Anyone who picks up Bill Cash’s new book assuming that it will inevitably be about the European Union is in for a big surprise. There is not a single reference to the EU in the index. Cash has a second life as a fine, dedicated historian. The subject of this book, John Bright, was one of the giants of the Victorian era, ranking alongside Gladstone and Disraeli. Karl Marx got it right (for once) when he hailed Bright as “one of the most gifted orators that England has ever produced”. He was the leading radical politician of his time, though never a wild, left-wing ideologue. He possessed, as Cash perceptively notes, a strong vein of conservatism in his character which brought him first into temporary alliances, and finally into a firm association, with the Conservative Party. He helped strengthen the Party as a progressive force in British politics. Bright was the first English...