The story is told of a whisky baron who gave £50,000 to the Conservatives to buy an earldom (pre-WW1). Having chosen his title, he signed the cheque with his title and post-dated it Jan 1st next year… (View Post)

That would be wonderful, if true. The rest of them are a sectarian rag bag of nomarks Northern Ireland would be considerably better off without. Sadly I suspect a formatting issue. (View Post)

If Milibandwagon Major came back as FS, I think that would absolutely smash the record for longest gap between spells as FS - currently George Canning, 12 years 11 months. (View Post)

There have of course been other examples of backbenchers catapulted to the top job, but most of them were either very technical or a long time ago. For example, Bonar Law in 1922, who had retired due… (View Post)

54 weeks, to be exact, although the general thrust of the comment is correct. However, the most recent example was Sunak. (View Post)