On Saturday, the world’s at­tention was on the beaches of Normandy, 65 years after the D-Day landings. But another anniversary passed un­marked. On June 6 1859, the Liberal party, which would dominate British politics for the next 60 years, was born. If nothing else, the date should have served as a reminder that great parties can rise – and that they can fall.

The coalition of disenchanted of the old Whig establishment, radicals and free-traders that gathered a century and a half ago in the Willis’ Rooms in London’s St James buried their differences in order to bury the minority Conservative government led by Lord Derby. Addressing the Liberal throng, Lord John Russell, architect of the Great Reform Act of 1832, declared the Conservative administration to be “unconstitutional and dangerous”. By the end of the month, Derby was gone and Britain’s first Liberal government was in power.