In Machiavelli’s Legacy, a superb new collection of essays edited by Timothy Fuller (University of Pennsylvania Press, £33.55), the great Harvard scholar Harvey Mansfield argues that neither those who recoil from the ruthlessness of what Machiavelli calls “my enterprise” (la mia impresa), nor those who try to excuse it, do justice to his originality and importance. For Mansfield, Machiavelli’s enterprise was nothing less than “the creation of the modern world”: a reinvention of both politics and philosophy in the name of what he calls “effectual truth” (verità effettuale). This new truth marks a radical departure from both Classical and Christian traditions. In the name of the Florentine republic (which the Medici princes had usurped), or Italy, Machiavelli is prepared to go to any lengths, including fraud and force. He drags us onto the solid ground of “firm science” (firma scienza). In doing so he conjured up much of what we take for granted: the primacy of this world over the next, of the real republic over Plato’s ideal one, the world of sense and fact, the here and now over the eternal cosmos.

It is imperative that we distinguish between this authentic Machiavellian legacy and the imitations that are the small change of political life. Vote Leave’s Dominic Cummings, for example, has let it be known that his Out campaign must and will involve dirty tricks, because “most important PR and propaganda was invented by the Communist Party”. The Times may think Cummings “astringent and effective”; Machiavelli would have regarded showing his hand in advance as an elementary error.

The absence of statesmanship on both sides of the Atlantic today shows that Machiavelli is underrated—and unread—by the politicians who most need his advice. Self-deluding liberals such as Barack Obama, sentimental conservatives such as Angela Merkel and vainglorious populists such as Donald Trump have brought us to our present predicament. There is no better antidote to hot air than The Prince.