Bob Boothby told me that in the mid-1920s, when Churchill was Chancellor of the Exchequer, riding high again after all the turmoil and failures of the First World War, and Lloyd George was an ex-Prime Minister who had fallen forever, so it seemed, he sought to bring them together. He was then Churchill's PPS. Churchill agreed to the meeting, in the Chancellor's room at the House — his home ground, as it were — and Bob escorted the Welsh Wizard there, and left them alone. Two hours later, Churchill summoned Bob by sounding his bell. He found him alone. Lloyd George had gone, taking the light with him: the room was shrouded in gathering dusk, and Churchill in the deepest gloom. For a long time, no one spoke. Then Churchill said: "I thought we would meet as equals. But — no. From start to finish, it was just as it had always been. Master and slave." (This story is sometimes told as "Master and Servant", but "slave" is the word Bob actually used in telling it to me, and it has the authentic Churchillian ring.)

The truth is that Churchill, in private conclave such as Cabinet meetings, dominated by monologue. But if this was denied him, and Lloyd George always did deny it, then he could not do dialogue. Lloyd George could. Indeed, he was at his best in dialogue or any intimate discussion between razor-sharp minds. Lloyd George won most of his key battles, political and military, in dialogue, and this is an important point which links him to Boris, who comes across most impressively when talking to a few chums as equals.

More generally, though, I think I would much prefer to be compared with Lloyd George than with Churchill. The latter was an incorrigible egoist, and his egoism sometimes got in the way of his genius, and even of his common sense. This was a point made to me by Bob Boothby, when he insisted that Lloyd George was, on the whole, a better war leader than Churchill. It was corroborated, interestingly enough, by the evidence of Clem Attlee, who told me that Churchill's egoism and monologues often made Cabinet meetings useless when they were most needed to take well-argued decisions on urgent matters. That was why some of the shrewder Cabinet ministers, and staff chiefs like Alanbrooke, Cunningham and top foreign military men like Eisenhower and Marshall, preferred Attlee to be in charge when Churchill was absent. He had a sense of business.

Yes — that is the point. Churchill lacked a business sense. Lloyd George had it. And I think Boris has it too. He has got things done in London by using business criteria, and I believe he can bring the same quality to bear at Number Ten. That is what we shall find out in the course of the year to come. Or will we? One of the biggest objections to a Labour victory next May is that it may make impossible a Boris Johnson premiership, and thus prevent us for the foreseeable future from experiencing another dose of Churchill, or of Lloyd George, or of something entirely different and, perhaps in its own way, just as exhilarating.