A weary governing party slouches towards defeat after 13 years in office. The recently appointed prime minister is derided as an out-of-touch figure – not a man of the people. Yes, we are in 1964, when the Tories’ Sir Alec Douglas-Home was in a plight similar to the one that could await Labour’s Gordon Brown in 2010.

I sometimes think history displays a very British sense of irony. Sir Alec, a decent man, was the last Old Etonian prime minister and his defeat, albeit surprisingly narrow, seemed to dispatch the toffs from the centre of power to the grouse moors for ever.