Above: the speeches of Disraeli repay careful study - Disraeli was the policy "wonk" of his day, creating a full ideology for the most unideological political party (the Conservatives) in the most unideological nation (the United Kingdom).
What should we make of Ed Miliband's deliberate invocation of Benjamin Disraeli yesterday at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester?
It has been in my mind a lot.
At first I thought it might be just a spoiling stunt, like Gordon Brown posing with Margaret Thatcher on the steps of 10 Downing Street.
But after a while, I realised he meant what he said. If you read the text of his speech it is possibly even more forceful than hearing the words. "One Nation" is now official Labour Party policy.
Clever, nuanced, multi-layered.
This does not mean that the Labour Party has adopted 19th century Toryism (in the way that the 1980s Conservatives adopted 19th century Liberalism). I cannot see Ed Miliband joining the Primrose League, were that organisation ever to be revived. Nor does it mean that Disraeli's ideology of imperialism will be making a comeback any time soon, for all the overseas quasi-imperial wars waged by Tony Blair - Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq, Afghanistan etc.
But it is perhaps a signal to the Labour Party membership that the class war is over.
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