How far Burke invented the idea, and how far he was simply chronicling what had happened already, is a good debating point. The Rockinghamites may have taken Burke's line during their 16 years of opposition after 1766, but they did not themselves regard him as so significant that he needed to be rewarded with high office when they gained power in 1782. It was Lord North, as much as any idea of Burke's, who united them in opposition to him, and to the idea of monarchical power that he embodied. What Dr Norman regards as an intellectual movement may, after all, have been a nakedly political one. But then perhaps the Rockinghamite Whigs were the first of many to under-appreciate the contribution he had made.

The author writes that "Burke is an anti-ideologist, and he is so because he is a conservative." The question of whether one can be an ideologist and a conservative is thus raised, and provides another interesting subject for debate. One cannot help but think that Burke's conservatism (and he was, remember, a Whig) was by 1789 of an entirely defensive variety, a set of ideas used to preserve the status quo against the horrific idea that the fires of France might start to burn down English property. Dr Norman echoes the important distinction between the American revolution, which did not seek to destroy an established order but was a response to an unjust imposition of taxation, and the French one, which wished to create a year-zero society, and which violated "civil and social manners" without bringing liberty. 

However, Burke did not invent the notion of parliamentary sovereignty, a concept for which we had fought a civil war and had our own Glorious Revolution. He did codify the idea that MPs were representatives and not delegates, an idea that struggles to survive in an era of hard whipping and MPs as careerists rather than public servants. The Burkean ideal of rights matched with duties confirms the settlement that had evolved since 1689. For Burke the constitution is "ratified by usage and experience": his political thought confirms the importance of a consensus settling around an idea of precedent, which is what makes him attractive to conservatives. The idea of the protection of liberty through representative government and the rule of law long pre-dates Burke.

Dr Norman is no fan of what he calls "liberal individualism", and enlists Burke on his side, saying his thought is "a devastating critique" of the idea. To some, though, it will just appear a critique: liberal individualism is far from devastated. "Various disasters," Dr Norman writes, "have gravely undermined conventional beliefs in the moral primacy of the individual, in the power of human reason alone to resolve political and economic problems . . . " I am not sure what else can be deployed in such circumstances, other than the power of human reason.