Interesting to see David Cameron quoting Gladstone yesterday at the Centre for Social Justice. The CSJ's foundations were laid on the work of the Conservative Party's former Renewing One Nation unit, set up under IDS by Tim Montgomerie and others.
In the interests of adding One Nation ballast to DC's reported Gladstonianism, it's worth pointing out that whilst the best of Gladstone rightly can command some cross-party appeal today, at his worst he definitely had something of the Brown about him: control-freakery and a considerable sense of his own moral compass being amongst his characteristics when in power. More than once he combined in himself the roles of Prime Minister and Chancellor. This was not a great success. As Disraeli pointed out before winning the 1874 general election (thereby giving the Conservative Party its first absolute majority for a generation and enabling it to implement an ambitious programme of social reform):
"For nearly five years the present Ministers have harassed every trade, worried every profession, and assailed or menaced every class, institution, and species of property in the country. Occasionally they have varied this state of civil warfare by perpetrating some job which outraged public opinion, or by stumbling into mistakes which have been always discreditable, and sometimes ruinous. All this they call a policy, and seem quite proud of it; but the country has, I think, made up its mind to close this career of plundering and blundering"
As with Gladstone, so with Brown.