The UK's biggest ever democratic exercise... isn't the Brexit vote.

Labour are pushing for a divisive second referendum which rips up their manifesto pledge to respect the result of the largest democratic exercise in our nation’s history and would take us back to square one.

The wisdom of Brandon Lewis, Tory MP and Home Office minister, there. It is a claim you hear a lot now. The UK's decision to leave the EU was a democratic exercise like no other, unparalleled in its scope and size, and so we absolutely must go along with it.

Luckily, this is very easy to test. There are two ways to gauge the size of an election. The turnout, and the number of votes cast. Here are the figures for the EU referendum:

2016 EU membership- 72.2%, 33,577,342

Sounds a lot, especially when compared to the only two other UK-wide referendums ever held:

1975 EEC membership- 64.6%, 25,903,194
2011 Alternative Vote- 42.2%, 19,279,022

Hands down, then. Brexit wins. It is miles clear in terms of both turnout and number of votes cast.

But referendums are very rare political events in the UK. We are far, far more used to thinking of democracy in terms of general elections. And here the 2016 referendum starts to look less outstanding:

General elections, 1945-2017 (I picked '45 as it is when a recognisable political landscape emerged).

1945- 72.8%, 24,073,025
1950- 83.9%, 28,771,124
1951- 82.6%, 28,596,594
1955- 76.8%, 26,759,729
1959- 78.7%, 27,862,652
1964- 77.1%, 27,657,148
1966- 75.8%, 27,264,747
1970- 72.0%, 28,305,534
1974 (Feb)- 78.8%, 31,321,982
1974 (Oct)- 72.8%, 29.189,104
1979- 76.0%, 31,221,362
1983- 72.7%, 30,671,137
1987- 75.3%, 32,529,578
1992- 77.7%, 33,614,074
1997- 71.4%, 31,286,284
2001- 59.4%, 26,367,383
2005- 61.4%, 27,148,510
2010- 65.1%, 29,687,604
2015- 66.1%, 30,697,525
2017- 68.7%, 32,204,124

By this measure, the EU referendum is either the second largest democratic exercise in terms of raw number of votes cast (behind the 1992 election), or the 14th in terms of turnout (behind every post-war election apart from 1970, 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015, and 2017). It is impressive compared to recent participation in general elections. But it hardly seems worth being the hill that we die on as a nation.

There is another claim that is made, that the Brexit vote represents the largest mandate for anything in British democratic history. This seems more credible. Certainly, more people voted for Brexit than for any other single option. But, it is very hard to compare the mandates received from general elections to one that is derived from a referendum. General elections produce majorities in the House of Commons, referendums do not. Prime Ministers do also receive shares of the vote, and total number of votes, but these reflect the multiple choices on offer across the UK. John Major holds the record for the most votes cast for his party, at 14 million in 1992, but this translated into 41.9% of the vote. The largest post-war vote share was Anthony Eden in 1955, at 49.7%, but was 'only' 13.3 million votes (fewer than both Labour and the Tories at the previous election).

Referendums are generally measured on the size of the winning vote share; the greater the winning vote share, the better the result, the more legitimacy it contains. And now 2016 is looking like it is in serious trouble:

1975 EEC membership- Yes- 67.23%, No- 32.77%
2011 Alternative Vote- No- 67.9%, Yes- 32.1%
2016 EU membership- Leave- 51.89%, Remain- 48.11%

For the record, it doesn't stand up well against the sub-national referendums we've either:

1973 Northern Irish 'border poll' (on whether to unify with the Republic of Ireland)- Remain in the UK- 98.9%, Join with the Republic of Ireland- 1.1%
1979 Scottish devolution- Yes- 51.62%, No 48.38% (failed as the rules said a certain percentage of people needed to vote for it, and 51.6% was too low)
1979 Welsh devolution- No- 79.74%, Yes- 20.26%
1997 Scottish devolution- Yes- 74.29%, No- 25.71%
1997 Welsh devolution- Yes- 50.3%, No- 49.7%
1998 Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement- Yes- 71.1%, No- 28.9%
2011 Welsh further powers devolution- Yes- 63.49%, No- 36.51%
2014 Scottish independence- No- 55.3%, Yes- 44.7% (Which, incidentally, saw a whopping 84.6% turnout, a level of participation way above that of even national elections in the 1950s).

So although more people voted for Brexit than any of the above, it does not command the same proportion of popular support as keeping Britain in the EEC, keeping first past the post, keeping Northern Ireland in the UK, enacting or furthering Scottish and Welsh devolution, keeping Scotland in the UK, or signing the Good Friday Agreement. It has the third weakest mandate of the UK's referendums, coming ahead only of implementing Welsh devolution in 1997 and Scottish devolution in 1979. The 2016 Brexit vote was 27.9 percentage points behind the largest mandate, rejecting Welsh devolution in 1979. Ironically, this is an issue that the electorate were allowed to change their minds on. (Leaving out the extraordinary vote on the Northern Irish border in 1973, where the poll was boycotted by nationalists, so those voting those who'd vote for heavily for the Union anyway).

Ironically, the Brexit vote is highly likely to undo many of these policies, as leaving the EU is likely to trigger Scottish independence and destroy the Good Friday Agreement, potentially leading to a united Ireland. Despite those things arguably having a greater popular mandate than Brexit.

As a final aside, it turns out that the policy which has the second most votes ever in British history is the decision to remain a member of the EEC, from the 1975 referendum. In fact, the difference between the two is a pathetic 32,000 odd votes. And yes, I hope the colossal irony is not lost that the 2016 referendum marks an overturning of the wishes of voters from 1975. In what could be called a second referendum on the same subject.

To finish. The 2016 referendum is not the largest democratic exercise in British history, neither in terms of turnout nor of raw votes cast; those belong to the 1950 and 1992 elections respectively. It is more accurate to say that more people voted for Brexit as a single option. But how this translates into a mandate is a tricky bit of political science. And shouldn't be bandied about carelessly. Especially when other decisions, decisions that were endorsed by separate referendums, are going to be torn up as a result.

I'll leave you with the strangest fact of all. The UK's largest democratic exercise ever was the 1992 election, with the most votes cast, and a record 14 million votes for the winning Conservatives. There is something disconcerting that, if we applied the logic of the 2016 referendum to general elections, John Major would still be Prime Minister today.

The true beneficiary of Britain's largest democratic exercise, campaigning in Luton, 1992

Clement Attlee voting in the 1950 election, which saw 83.9% of the electorate take part, the other contender for Britain's largest democratic exercise.

The idea for this blog came from this article: https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-referendum-not-largest-democratic-exercise/

"A devil of a job to get it out:" The Army goes in to Northern Ireland, 1969

In August 1969, the Republican Labour MP for West Belfast, Gerry Fitt, found himself taking shelter with some of his constituents in a shop along the Falls Road in Belfast. Outside, there was chaos. Northern Ireland was teetering on the brink of a total collapse in law and order. Clashes between Unionists and Nationalists were blighting every major town and city. The Royal Ulster Constabulary was widely perceived to be taking the side of the unionists; rather than suppressing the disorder, they were fuelling it. People were being forced from their homes, in scenes more akin to a pogrom than a riot in post-war Britain. 

Fitt's constituents begged him to use his influence with the Home Secretary, Labour's James Callaghan, to do what had been done in Derry several days previously, and send in the British army to keep the two sides apart. So Fitt used the phone in the shop to talk to Callaghan, and told him what the people wanted. "Gerry,' Callaghan replied, "I can get the army in, but it will be a devil of a job to get it out."

It is one of those historical occurrences that is a bit too neat, written with the benefit of hindsight. But it accurately reflects the contradictions and consequences of the events in the summer of 1969, when Britain sent troops to Northern Ireland.

The partition of Ireland in the 1920s had left deep scars. Northern Ireland was a predominantly Protestant and unionist polity, and the Ulster Unionist Party reigned supreme. "A Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people" ran the saying about the local government at Stormont, and it was accurate. Despite accounting for nearly a third of the population, the Catholic and nationalist population suffered from being treated as second-class citizens; it was harder for them to vote, and they took second priority in terms of jobs and housing. The security apparatus of the new state, the unionist dominated RUC and the B-Specials reservists, took a hardline on policing. Understandably, for they had seen their predecessors in British Ireland taken apart by the IRA, whose spectre haunted the newly partitioned state. This state of affairs persisted from the 1920s until the mid-1960s, with little attention from Britain, let alone the rest of the world. With its own Parliament and Prime Minister, Northern Ireland had a huge level of autonomy, and British politicians saw no need to upset the status quo. But with the birth rate in the nationalist community outpacing the unionist birth rate, this was a house built on sand.

It was events on the other side of the world that began to make the sands shift. In the Deep South of the USA, the struggles of the civil rights movement, standing against the segregationist Jim Crow laws, were beamed around the world, and held up as a symbol of the 1960s. This infectious air of progress through peaceful means caught on in Northern Ireland. In 1967, the Northern Irish Civil Rights Association, formed of a coalition of left wing groups, began to campaign for fairer voting, reform of the police, and an end to discrimination in jobs and housing. From 1968, they began to stage a series of marches across Northern Ireland.

The reaction of many unionists was little short of hysteria. They warned that to concede on these measures would start Northern Ireland on a path that would end with Irish unification, which would see the end of their way of life. They also claimed that the NICRA had been infiltrated by the IRA. This was true, but only as the IRA had pretty much abandoned the armed campaign and had committed its members to this venture to try and achieve Irish unity. The figurehead who emerged as the leading voice (ironically, as he was so loud) of the hardliners was Ian Paisley, the firebrand Protestant minister. Doubly ironically, it was Paisley's rhetoric that breathed new life into the loyalist paramilitary organisations, who prepared to defend their way of life by force.

In late 1968, a civil rights march went ahead despite being banned by the Northern Irish government. The RUC set on the march, and many were badly injured. The footage that emerged from the march looked very similar to the actions of the police in the American Deep South. In response, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Terence O'Neill, introduced a mild package of reforms to meet the demands of the NICRA. But so febrile was the atmosphere that loyalist unionists cried treachery. An election called by O'Neill saw the Ulster Unionist Party split badly on the issue, and he was forced to resign. At the same time, a by-election to Westminster was won by Bernadette Devlin, only 21 years old, standing on the Unity ticket, which supported the NICRA. The outside world was beginning to notice that something was rotten in the state of Northern Ireland.

Which brings us to the summer of 1969. In Derry, a city so divided that even the name is politically contentious, a march to commemorate a Protestant victory in a battle in Irish history was held on August 12th. The march happens every year, but in this atmosphere it was a spark that ignited a tinderbox. Police clashed with citizens around the edge of the heavily Catholic Bogside area. Barricades were erected, and the police, joined by unionist civilians, got into running battles with nationalists. Tear gas was met with petrol bombs. In areas which were more mixed, families from the minority were forced out of their homes, which were destroyed. The RUC, badly out of its depth, called up the hated B Specials, which sent more fear through the Catholic community. The unrest began to flare up in Belfast, and other areas.

All of this was taking place in full view of the world's media, on the streets of a major Western democracy. The pressure to act was immense. Harold Wilson, Britain's Prime Minister, discussed with James Callaghan their options. If the government of Northern Ireland asked for help, it would be given, providing there were more reforms to meet the demands of the protesters. James Chichester-Clark, the new Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, bowed to the inevitable, and requested help from the British government. The army was sent to Derry on August 14th, and arrived in Belfast a few days later.

In light of later developments, the reactions seem bizarre. Many unionists detested the interference by the British government in their own affairs, especially when it was forcing them to make concessions. Dublin was furious at the move, but totally powerless to do more than complain. As for the protesters themselves, they were delighted with a more impartial face of law and order. "We've won, we've won, we've brought down the government" went the chant from the barricades. There are many stories of British soldiers being brought tea and cakes. After all, the soldiers had actually come to protect them, unlike their supposed saviours. 'I Ran Away' was graffitied all over Catholic areas, and contempt for the paralysis in the moribund IRA was widespread. The soldiers patrolled openly, with berets and safety catches on. The commander of the soldiers was delighted with the deployment, as he had heard that Northern Ireland's golf scene was second to none.

There were voices in the summer of 1969 that predicted the recent spate of violence would not be stopped by the arrival of British soldiers, and in fact would get worse. Callaghan and Wilson were under no illusions as to what they had done. The army knew that without a real political drive towards conciliation, the soldiers would soon be caught in the middle of an ugly conflict. And the events of 1969 did lead to a hardening of attitudes on both sides. On the unionist side, there was outrage that even the British government was forcing them to make concessions to the nationalists. For the nationalists, the reforms that accompanied the soldiers were nowhere near enough, and the soldiers soon came to be seen as part of the unionist state. The deployment of British troops caused a crisis in the IRA. It split, with those who wanted it to actually do something leaving and creating a new organisation dedicated to taking the fight to the British, the Provisional IRA. The seeds of the sectarian chaos of the early 1970s was being sown.

James Callaghan probably did not speak to an embattled Gerry Fitt over the phone in August 1969. But the anecdote perfectly encapsulates the possibilities and problems which existed in the deployment of British soldiers to Northern Ireland.

Soldiers from the Prince of Wales Regiment deployed on the streets of Derry, 14th August 1969

https://canvas-story.bbcrewind.co.uk/sites/usatc/ This site is an excellent summary, with pictures and archive video, of the story I have tried to tell.

Our new Prime Minister- A warning from 2004

Boris is scary. He's done this programme, and he is a lovable moptop, and he's just got this thing going on where he goes "mymymymymy, well, mymymymymymymy, well" and yet you know he would have no hesitation in corralling you into a football stadium and shooting you.

Jeremy Hardy, The News Quiz, BBC Radio 4, October 2004

P.S. For those unsure on the context of this remark (like me when I first heard this!), it is about the 1973 coup in Chile, where the Pinochet government imprisoned, tortured, and killed political opponents in the Chile National Stadium. For more information, click below, or read the excellent Pinochet in Piccadilly :

"The Eagle has landed": Fifty Years of Apollo 11

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. 

We came in peace for all mankind

I am an historian. I teach the Cold War to teenagers. I know those words, on the plaque attached to the lunar landing module in the Sea of Tranquility, left there by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin 50 years ago, are not true. The USA did not send astronauts to Earth's satellite in peace for all mankind. It went to the Moon because JFK had needed to give the country a boost after repeated Soviet successes in the Space Race back in the early 1960s. The Johnson administration had continued to support NASA, in part at least, to distract the country from the social divides his policies were opening up, and the escalating catastrophe he was presiding over in Vietnam. It was Richard Nixon, the president these landings occurred under, who cancelled further manned lunar landings. After a brief exploration, America turned its back on the Moon. No person has been there since 1972. No space probes visited between the mid 1970s and mid 1990s. And the memory of Project Apollo is very much fading. Of the 12 men to have walked on the Moon, only four are still alive. The dreams of the early Space Age have faded and cooled.

I know all this. And yet...

It is impossible not to be inspired by the Apollo missions, and the early years of space exploration. Impossible not to marvel at the idea that people flew to another world, using calculations done on a slide rule, in a device with less thinking power than a single app on your phone. That science came on leaps and bounds, both our understanding of the universe, but also in terms of 'spin off' products that we use in our everyday lives. And this was all achieved without human killing human.

Surely, that is worth another shot?

We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish.

Arthur C. Clarke, Space and the Spirit of Man, 1965

The view from the Eagle lunar lander, out over the Sea of Tranquility

Eagle, with the Earth above it. This picture contains every human being apart from three

Buzz Aldrin, descending the Eagle's ladder. At this point, Neil Armstrong was still the only person to have walked on the Moon

The plaque on the lunar lander

The only clear picture of Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface

Tranquility Base

The face of success- Neil Armstrong, returning to the Eagle

June 4th, 1989: A Tale of Two Countries

Today marks two significant anniversaries from the end of the Cold War. One was the death knell of a communist regime, and one was a communist regime not afraid to kill its own people to remain in power.

We start in Poland. The 1980s had not been kind to Poland. In the early 1980s, the first free trade union in the Eastern Bloc, Solidarity, had risen from a shipyard strike in Gdansk. Headed by the charismatic electrician Lech Walesa, they challenged the communist regime by their very existence. Within a year, 1/3 Polish adults was a member of Solidarity. This led the military to step in and seize power, outlawing Solidarity and sending it underground.

Yet this show of force could not save the communist regime. By the mid 1980s, the economy was in crisis, and the government realised it needed the help of the opposition to get any reforms through. Solidarity re-emerged from the shadows, and went into negotiations. By early 1989, the Round Table Talks had agreed to hold elections with an element of competition, the first in Eastern Europe since the late 1940s. However, the system was rigged to ensure communist domination continued. Only 35% of the seats in the Sejim, and the entire Senate, were to be actually elected. The remaining seats were guaranteed for the communists and those political parties they allowed to exist.

Solidarity didn't hold out much hope for this show of democracy. Walesa later said he'd only gone along with it to regain legal status. There was no way that they could win outright anyway. But they went ahead and campaigned anyway.

'High Noon' - Solidarity election poster, 1989

But Poland's hatred of communist rule ran deep. On election day, they delivered a surprise. All 35% of the contestable seats were swept by Solidarity. Some ruling party communist candidates, despite sitting in 'guaranteed seats,' failed to cross the minimum threshold for being elected. The fellow travellers also lost ground. The first genuine electoral test of communism in more than forty years had found it wanting.

Solidarity had not won a landslide victory. But they had brought real democratic politics to Poland, and that was far more important. Over the summer, the parties sat down to negotiate their way out of this mess. The communist linked parties saw which way the wind was blowing. When the Sejim met in August 1989, the Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki was elected as Prime Minister. He was at the helm of the first non-communist government in Eastern Europe since before the Second World War.

The Polish elections of June 1989 sent a shockwave through the Eastern Bloc. When others had dared to even step towards the exit, like Hungary in 1956, and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the response had been Soviet military intervention. Now, the reforming government of Mikhail Gorbachev announced it would not do so- The Sinatra Doctrine, as Gorbachev called it- I did it my way. With the fear of the Red Army gone, and an example that it could be achieved now starting work in Poland, the other communist regimes began to collapse. By the end of 1989, not a single one would remain in office.

How differently all this could have been. In our rush to praise the seemingly inevitable rise of democracy, we forget how else it could have turned out. As the sun came up on a Poland where the communist regime had been dealt a mortal blow, in China the long night was at its darkest.

In mid April 1989, Hu Yaobang, a reform minded leader of the People's Republic of China, died. His funeral was used as a focal point for those who wanted to protest at the lack of democracy in communist China. A ragtag coalition of students, workers, and pro-democracy activists began to maintain a protest camp in Tiananmen Square, in the very heart of Beijing. As the USSR started to open up to the rest of the world, under the twin banners of glasnost and perestroika, many in China wondered, why not us?

They caught the attention, partly of the watching world, but also of millions within China. Protests spread to other cities. For a fleeting time, it looked as if the People's Republic of China would join the momentous changes of 1989, and that, at the very least, communism in China would change to be more open.

Tiananmen Square, sometime in April or May 1989

But the heirs of Mao were not going to go down without a fight. As the weeks stretched into months, they realised that their only option was to use force against the students. Unlike the leaders of Eastern Europe, they were prepared to turn the armed forces against their own people to remain in power. But even then, problems arose. Units from outside Beijing had to be brought in, as some members of the People's Liberation Army were not trusted to shoot at their own side.

What happened in Beijing on the night of June 3rd - 4th 1989 is still shrouded in a fog of censorship, myth, rumour, and misinformation. Certainly, the soldiers fired on the students. The units drove into the very centre of the city, firing indiscriminately. Many Chinese were shocked. They hadn't expected the People's Liberation Army to be used against their own.

Buses and vehicles burn and pro-democracy demonstrators retreat down Chang'an Avenue as soldiers advance towards Tiananmen Square.

What happened in Tiananmen Square itself is even murkier. There are stories of students being allowed to leave, of army vehicles plowing into massed ranks singing The Internationale. What is evident is that, by around 6am on June 4th, there were no students left in Tiananmen Square. No one knows how many died. Some say as few as 200. Most estimates say 2000-3000. The British ambassador to China at the time was told by a source it was as high as 10,000.

Western journalists watched on, recording the slaughter for the rest of the world. The chaos is best evidenced by the peerless reporting from Kate Adie of the BBC [Click on the picture for her news report.]

But the moment that captured the chaos that engulfed China was taken the next day, when several Western photographers captured a shot of a single man holding up a column of tanks leaving Tiananmen Square. He then got onto the tank, spoke with the commander, before getting off, and vanishing from the pages of history. No one knows what became of him. But he is known in the West as Tank Man.

The People's Republic of China survived. Protests in other cities were also crushed, although that story is far from fully understood. Civil war, a very real possibility as Chinese killed Chinese, was averted. Today, China's democracy movement is dead. There is surveillance on a massive scale. And many Chinese people will claim never to have heard what happened in Tiananmen Square on that awful June day, 30 years ago. To them, Tank Man is a mystery.

Both these anniversaries deserve to be remembered. 30 years ago today, the people of Poland blazed a trail where the rest of the crumbling Eastern Bloc was soon to follow. But in China, a regime determined to cling to power used force to do just that, and put out the light of free expression in China. Freedom is not inevitable. We should celebrate its successes, and remember those who died trying.

_______________________________________________________________

Further reading

For the ways that Poland's vote is shaping the country today- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/world/europe/poland-election-anniversary-solidarity.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

On the messy, contested nature of Poland's elections- https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2019/06/04/the-peoples-vote-that-ended-communism-lessons-from-poland-on-the-role-of-elections/

For haunting photos of the rise and fall of the Tiananmen Square protests- https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/pictures-tiananmen-square-anniversary

For an all round summary of the crackdown in China- https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/opinions/global-opinions/tiananmen-square-a-massacre-erased/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.dc2caa34bb89

"Dancing on a Volcano"- Britain and the Weimar Republic

There is a historical parallel abroad in the land. It is not nice, it is not pretty. And it hopefully isn't true.

More and more, Britain in the late 2010s is looking like the Weimar Republic. This is the name historians have given to Germany for a decade and a half in the early 20th century. It began in 1918, as the Kaiser was toppled from power and a nascent democracy ended the 'war to end all wars.' It ended in 1933, as economic collapse and political chaos culminated in a takeover by the very epitome of historical evil.

With its narrative of political and economic turmoil, culminating in a serious crisis, the attractions for using Weimar as a parallel to Britain today are obvious. Firstly, there are the huge economic shocks that overwhelmed the political systems. In 2008, there was the Great Recession. Coming off of years of growth and easy money, the implosion of the world financial system was a huge shock. It was followed by the years of austerity, as conservative-minded governments and central bankers used the excuse of the ballooning deficits they'd created to deal with the problem to shrink the size of the state. In the Weimar Republic, the good years of the Golden 20s suddenly gave way to the Great Depression. The collapse of the US stock market had serious ramifications across the world, as US loans were recalled. Germany had been loaned $800 million by the USA to help it with reparations (more of which below), and now couldn't repay. Unemployment skyrocketed to 6 million. Thousands of German companies went under. The Weimar system was totally unable to cope with the catastrophe facing it, and so people turned to those who said they had the answer. Voting for the Nazis was, for many Germans, about choosing a better future, one with money in their pockets and hope for their lives. Sound familiar to 21st century Britons?

The Weimar Republic had been born in defeat. Within a year, the newly installed democratic politicians had agreed to the Armistice, ending the fighting on the Allies' terms, and signed the humiliation that was the Treaty of Versailles. The army was shrunk, land was taken, Germany took the blame for the entire war. Within four years of signing Versailles, the difficulty of paying the crippling reparations had caused a French invasion and hyperinflation.

'The November Criminals' was the insult hurled at those who had allowed Germany to sink into this abyss. The politicians had betrayed Germany, and the German people. They'd allowed the country to be dominated by foreign powers. What was needed was for the German people to re-assert their own national sovereignty. to send a message to the politicians who had got them into this mess, to take back control

I'm being facetious, but only just.

This message of betrayal, this toxic atmosphere led to political violence. There were four serious uprisings by the far-left and far-right. Politicians were assassinated. You might think this doesn't sound like Britain. Think of the heightened rhetoric, the bile and invective hurled at political opponents on both sides of every debate. Think of Jo Cox, gunned down by a far-right obsessive in her own constituency, who stunned the judge into silence when he gave his name in court as "death to traitors, freedom for Britain."

Those who spread this message of betrayal, today we could call them populists. For the first few years, the 'Weimar coalition' of centre-left and centre-right had governed. The SPD, the centre-left party that was cousin to the British Labour Party, was assured of the votes of the workers. The Centre party did exactly what it said on the tin. The conservative right was more complicated, but still present in the Weimar coalition.

Then the Great Depression came. The centre could not hold. Voters flocked left and right. On the left, they found the German Communist Party. Karl Marx had predicted that Germany had the ideal conditions for a communist revolution. In 1917, the world had seen the first successful communist revolution in Russia. Many felt, and feared, that Germany would be next. And on the right, they found the Nazi party. Before it became the definition of evil in the 20th century, the Nazi party was looked to as the hope of Germany. It promised that all of Germany's problems could be easily fixed, all it required was to smash the establishment, put Germany and the Germans first, and trust in them and them alone. Britain of 2019, take note. Nothing is easy. Especially complicated things. Those saying they are easy probably deserve a closer look.

But there are two major differences that separate the UK of 2019 from the Weimar Republic. The Great Depression had a far, far more severe impact on Germany than the Great Recession had on the UK. Yes, the austerity imposed to 'deal' with the deficit has been awful for millions. But the reason that the governments of 2008 decided to run up those deficits was precisely because they wanted to avoid the mass unemployment of the 1930s. The sheer number of people out of work caused the social welfare network to seize up under pressure; a collapse in the tax intake had rendered the system unworkable. Across the world, government policies made things worse, not better. And they got much worse much, much faster than they did in 2008. The depth and severity of the crisis that overwhelmed the Weimar Republic makes even the crash of 2008 look like peanuts.

The even bigger difference between contemporary Britain and the Weimar Republic is that of the democratic tradition. Imperial Germany had had elections, but they had been for a tiny proportion of the population, to a toothless Reichstag. In the UK, we've had 90 years of true universal suffrage, a century of near-universal suffrage, and pretty much two centuries of an expanding franchise. The fact that democracy was so new, so untested in Germany, meant that it would have been a hard road even if there had been no external shocks to the system. Many Germans, particularly on the conservative wing, in the armed forces and in business, saw democracy as an aberration. Nothing encapsulates this better than when Field Marshal Hindenburg was elected as President of the Weimar Republic in 1925; he only took office after he had consulted with the abdicated Kaiser, and had received his blessing. There was always a solid bloc of voters who opted for parties who outright opposed the new system. By the final free and fair election in the Weimar era, in late 1932, around 58% of the vote went to parties committed to ending the Republic. Weimar was memorably described as 'a democracy without democrats.'

When the Nazis assumed power in Weimar Germany, it was initially done quite legitimately. Hitler was invited into office by the President, and the Reichstag was dissolved so he could seek a new mandate from the people. By a piece of astonishing good fortune (for the Nazis anyway), a mentally ill communist burnt down the Reichstag, justifying emergency powers for the government. Soon after the partially-free elections, the Nazis rammed the Enabling Act through the Reichstag by various dubious means. These two measures were the basis for the twelve years of horror that followed. But many Germans were not sorry to see democracy go. It had brought them much trouble and chaos. Dictatorship was a return to what they knew.

The UK of 2019 is indeed severely divided, between political parties that seem unable to bridge their differences. And yes, democracy is having a crisis. But there are two centuries of democratic tradition behind it in the UK, and a century of true mass democracy, both for parliament, but also for local councils, regional and national assemblies, and yes, referendums. By itself, this will not be enough to save our democratic tradition. But it hopefully means it will not go down without a fight.

What happened in the Weimar Republic isn't inevitable. It doesn't have to happen here.

A protest against Brexit, 2019, and against the Treaty of Versailles, 1919

Stabbed in the back by the Weimar politicians and drinking the poison of Brexit betrayal

The passage of the Enabling Act by the Reichstag, March 1933, which ended the Weimar Republic and created a one-party dictatorship in its place

Do all political lives end in failure?

And so, at long last, she is gone.

No one can be surprised at Theresa May's departure from Downing Street being announced yesterday. After months of presiding over a national disintegration, it was only a matter of time.

At least, this was the tone of much of the media coverage of her departure. Which got me wondering, as, if you think about it, it is only a matter of time before all Prime Ministers leave office. Even Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, at the height of their power, flush from their landslide victories, were only temporary occupants of Number 10.

Much has also been made of how May is going at a time which is not of her choosing. Again, this left me thinking, doesn't that happen to all of them? In my lifetime, Margaret Thatcher was defenestrated, John Major was buried beneath a landslide, Tony Blair was hounded from office by his own party, Gordon Brown saved the world but not the election, and then David Cameron decided to save his party with the referendum. And we all know how that went.

This seems a pretty sorry record, even for those on that list deemed to be successful leaders. Enoch Powell once said that "All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs."

That definitely appears to be the case recently. But has it always been like that?

So, for all the Prime Ministers since the Second World War, here is when they left office, and why.

(You're welcome)

Theresa May- 2019, failing to deliver the results of the referendum.

David Cameron- 2016, losing the referendum.

Gordon Brown- 2010, election defeat (Well, he was unable to remain as Prime Minister in a hung parliament, but you know what I mean).

Tony Blair- 2007, conflict between Blairites and Brownites inside Labour pushed him out.

Major- 1997, landslide defeat of epic proportions.

Margaret Thatcher- 1990, whole multitude of reasons (poll tax, personality clashes, European integration, voter fatigue, party fatigue, the fact even some Tories thought she was absolutely insane).

James Callaghan- 1979, election defeat.

Harold Wilson- 1976, resigned.

Edward Heath- 1974, election defeat (Again, unable to remain Prime Minister in a hung parliament).

Harold Wilson- 1970, election defeat.

Alec Douglas-Home- 1964, election defeat

Harold Macmillan- 1963, illness (Although in reality Macmillan was looking for a way out after a very turbulent couple of years).

Anthony Eden- 1957, Suez Crisis, plus the fact his health collapsed due to the strains of running the disastrous government that he did.

Winston Churhill- 1955, suffered a stroke in office, and his health, plus advancing age, led him to go into serious decline.

Clement Attlee- 1951, election defeat (in a setup that could only happen in Britain, Attlee polled Labour's highest ever number of votes, more than Churchill, and still somehow ended up losing).

Winston Churchill- 1945, election defeat, despite leading the country to victory in the Second World War.

Amongst the people turfed out over election defeats, hung parliaments, illnesses, and party political intrigues, the end of one premiership stands out. In 1976, Harold Wilson resigned as Prime Minister because he could. 

Both at the time and since, speculation has been rife. Were secret documents stolen from Downing Street in the weeks before, causing Wilson to go? Was his adviser's brother involved in fraud? Was he having an affair with his adviser? Had some shadowy part of MI5, or the South African security service, got something against him? Was he a Soviet spy? Was he ill, either with the colon cancer that would claim his life in 1995, or could he detect the early stages of Alzheimers that blighted his famous memory?

Or was it simply that he had always intended to go on his own terms? By 1976, Wilson had served as Prime Minister for nearly 8 out of the last 12 years, and he was exhausted. Even before his shock defeat in 1970, he had been telling people he didn't intend to serve as Prime Minister longer than 8 years, before he'd hand over to someone else. With his second government facing horrendous difficulties, and Wilson having recently turned 60, maybe it seemed like the time to honour his word and move on. Whatever it was, Wilson stands alone in postwar politics in having left on his own terms.

Wilson in 1976, becoming the only British Prime Minister in postwar history to leave Downing Street on his own terms.

As we watch Theresa May prepare to end her disastrous premiership, it is worth reflecting that, for most Prime Ministers, the end is never how they imagine it. Every Prime Minister bar one has been forced out of office at a time not of their choosing, having failed to achieve the goals they wanted. The Tory MPs scrambling to replace May should probably take note.