Boris should pay attention to Stanley. Not Stanley Johnson, his father; but Stanley Baldwin, his Conservative predecessor. Because when that Stanley called a general election in December, the Tories lost. It was the last time the country went to the polls that late in the year and there are echoes with today. In December 1923 the then new prime minister — a dynamic change from the previous weak occupant of Downing Street — wanted a majority to push through his plan to withdraw Britain from the free-trading system with its neighbours and impose tariff barriers. It looked like a popular idea, protecting Britain's ailing industrial towns from early 20th-century globalisation.
