Tom Iremonger (1916–98), a cousin of Sir Anthony Eden, served as a Conservative MP for 20 unremarkable years. His Jamaican-born wife, Lucille (1915–89), has stronger claims to lasting public recognition as the author of a wild and weirdly thought-provoking excursion into political psychology. Its full title – The Fiery Chariot: A Study of British Prime Ministers and the Search for Love – seemed more fitting for a Mills and Boon novella than a serious contribution to academic literature. Presumably this helps to explain the four-year delay before the book attracted respectful attention from a distinguished scholar (Berrington 1974).

Iremonger's racy subtitle, in fact, was somewhat misleading. Rather than dwelling on amatory exploits, her real purpose was to explain the quest for political pre-eminence, through 16 case-studies of prime ministers. She believed that she had found the clue in “unexpected resemblances” in their biographies: they had all been driven to the top by a search for love, to compensate themselves for under-appreciation in their formative years. Iremonger was particularly struck by the frequency with which past prime ministers had suffered “the loss of a parent in childhood or early adolescence” (Iremonger 1970: 4). Indeed, around two-thirds of premiers between 1721 and 1940 had been afflicted in that way.

What is the debt trap? How was it set? Who is being disproportionally trapped and why? And what can be done to escape it? These are the questions at the heart of this book. In this chapter, we start to probe at state failures that have pulled families into problem debt and homelessness. They are being made to feel, and physically be, not at home in a failing state.

England is a country where international law is being flouted. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights codifies the right to adequate housing in which a range of freedoms are granted: protection against forced evictions; the right to be free from arbitrary interference with one's home, privacy and family; and the right to choose one's residence, to determine where to live and to freedom of movement.1 These rights are, however, being systematically infringed, especially for women and children in England today. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, “women and children first” was the prevailing norm in emergencies when survival resources were limited. In the early twenty-first century, when fiscal policy has shrunk the welfare state and the housing emergency is the worst in living memory, “women and children last” is the modus operandi. The debt trap has underlying unhoming tendencies that are being faced, head-on, by growing numbers of homeless families living in “temporary accommodation” that is anything but temporary.

As we alluded to earlier, not only are mothers and their children living in temporary accommodation being failed, but low-income single mothers are being belittled, stigmatized and blamed as “work-shy” citizens responsible for the country's impoverished economic and moral trajectory.

GOVERNANCE FORMS

Charter

First royal charter (1606) created a public–private partnership governed by a royal council. A double charter with the Plymouth Company covering 34°–45°N latitude, or the Atlantic coast of America to the western sea, with Virginia south of 41°N at Chesapeake Bay and Plymouth north in New England.

Second royal charter (1609) reorganized, reconstituted as a joint-stock company. Granted the seacoast of America 200 miles north and 200 miles south of Point Comfort, and all the islands lying within 100 miles. Hundreds of investors listed as part of the company.

Third royal charter (1612) council made to be responsible to shareholders, conveying to the company all islands within 300 leagues of the coast between 30° and 41°N latitude (to include Bermuda). Granted the Company's governing council the right to keep court and assembly for the order and government of the plantation (10–18 councillors, served indefinitely: powerful men holding executive, legislative, judicial roles).

Great Charter (1618) replaced corporate landownership with the headright system.

When recruiting his first frontbench team after his election as Conservative leader in 1965, Edward Heath briefly considered the claims of the MP for Finchley, Margaret Thatcher, whom he had known since they had fought adjoining constituencies in the 1950 general election. Heath decided against the appointment because his Chief Whip, William Whitelaw, had advised him that “once she's there we’ll never be able to get rid of her” (Prior 1986: 42).

In 1965 Heath had been Leader of the Opposition rather than prime minister; and at the time a Conservative leader was expected merely to find space somewhere for a “token woman”. In September 2012 David Cameron faced a much more complicated team-building task. As prime minister of a coalition government he had to satisfy his Liberal Democrat allies without alienating too many of his Conservative colleagues. In addition, he hoped to realise his much-vaunted ambition to “modernize” the way his party looked, even if he had already given up any hope of changing its modes of thought and speech. His initiative had borne fruit in the 2010 general election, to the extent that the number of Tory women MPs had almost trebled (rising from 17 to 48). Yet in his first cabinet, just four out of 22 full members were women, and after the reshuffle that number would be unchanged. He had to make sure that women were reasonably represented in a new crop of junior ministers.

10.1 INTRODUCTION

Many of us are propelled into philosophy by the sense that things are not as they appear to us to be. This is not just a worry about our susceptibility to local error. While doubts may start near to home, philosophical doubt is global. Consequently, it cannot be addressed by scrutinizing more carefully what is before us or by travelling more widely in the world. Uncertainty is directed equally to my perception of the cup next to my word processor as to my knowledge of a volcano on a distant planet, the nature of an entity such as an electron, or the origin of the universe. Doubts as to the true nature of the stuff of the world or, indeed, of our own nature, may expand into profound uneasiness, as when we fear that we may be dreaming or alternately into delight, when we sense that there may be more to the world, something more beautiful, unthreateningly mysterious and wonderful, than what seems to surround us as we go about our seemingly humdrum business in a seemingly humdrum world.

The very process of questioning the reality of what seems to surround us, what we interact with in our waking lives, may seem itself to be questionable. The suggestion that everything revealed to us, everything we engage with on weekdays and weekends, may not be real seems to remove any standard against which unreality may be judged. There cannot be unreality without something – reality – as a benchmark.

The mission was simple. Get the cavalcade of limousines and the associated bus-loads of officials, diplomats and assistants up the road to the traditional pub and have a pint and some fish and chips. But things were never going to be that straightforward. The first problem was the road – a narrow country lane, which could barely accommodate a large car, let alone a fleet of buses. The second was the pub – a pretty but modest venue, which meant only a few people would actually get to go inside when the delegation finally arrived. The third was the demand that a few realistic-looking local punters be sprinkled around the place to make it appear vaguely natural for the photographers and journalists when they snapped their pictures.

The lead participants in this mini-drama were the then British Prime Minister David Cameron, and the visiting dignitary he was entertaining – supreme leader of China, Xi Jinping. It was September 2015, and the event was the first State Visit by a leader of the People's Republic to the UK for a decade. The specific location was Cameron's Oxfordshire constituency, at the Plough Inn at Cadsden, a pub he liked near one of his homes. There were other reasons to make a fuss about this event. From July 2012 to late 2013, relations between the two countries had hit a particularly rocky patch. In May 2012, Cameron had met with the exiled Tibetan religious leader, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, despite vehement protestations from Beijing. He had done so, on the pretext that the Dalai Lama was a spiritual personage, during a ceremony to confer a prize on the Tibetan at St Paul's Cathedral in London. He may also have calculated that as London would later that year host the Olympics, after the Beijing games in 2008, the Chinese would refrain from any major response.