Judging by the scale of the outrage inspired by these ‘scandals’, the media and much of the British public clearly believe that such misdemeanours are serious enough to disqualify the offenders from high office. It is precisely our obsession with bureaucratic perfection that is robbing Britain of the inspiring leaders we need. But a cursory glance through the last millennium reveals that few of our great British heroes would have passed 21st-century purity tests. In an act that stinks of ‘coercive control’, Henry locked her up, demonstrating a toxic masculinity that, in 21st-century Britain, would have had him turfed out of Royal Lodge. These are the men and women who made Britain great.
