Henry VIII would have sorted Brexit – Starkey

Television historian David Starkey thinks a more radical solution to the Brexit impasse is needed.

He proposes somebody more along the lines of Henry VIII, the blood-soaked tyrant of the 16th century, whose ministers – not to mention his wives – had an unfortunate habit of being detached from their heads.

"We need a Henry VIII or a Churchill to get us out of this mess," he says mischievously.

Most people would probably accept that Churchill was an effective leader during a dark period in British history, but you suspect his tongue might be slightly in cheek when he talks about Henry VIII.

The infamous monarch and his six wives will be the subject of a talk by Starkey at Stafford Gatehouse Theatre in October. And one thing you can always guarantee with Starkey is that it will be colourful and opinionated.

He demonstrates this as he draws a rather unfavourable comparison between Theresa May's handling of Brexit and Henry VIII's dealings with the Vatican.

"If you want to get things done, you have to have people who put a bit of fear into others, and Henry VIII did that," he says.

"Mrs Thatcher did that, and to his credit so did Blair, for all his sickly sweet demeanour, he knew how to put fear into people, or he got Alastair Campbell to do it for him.

"Now, we have that incompetent woman, who was never up to the job, and the awful mess she has made of Brexit trying to follow on from another incompetent prime minister in David Cameron.

"It's laughable to think they were ever going to get a good deal when negotiating with the EU, how would they ever strike fear into anybody?"

Starkey describes the Reformation, where the Church of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church after Pope Clement VII refused Henry a divorce, as a previous version of Brexit. And unlike Mrs May, he says the King took no prisoners in ensuring Britain left on his terms.

"He was a tyrant in the end, but Henry got things done, he was able to steer England through that crisis, through that first Brexit which saw England gain independence from a foreign power," he says.

"He did so against much greater pressure, in that he had to deal with a potential rebellion and the fear of God."

Given his knowledge of British constitutional history, are there any precedents from the past that give a clue as to how the present crisis is going to end?

"One of the first lessons of history, and indeed life, is that there is not an answer to everything," he says.

"I honestly don't have a clue what will happen, I don't see a way out of it. I think it could be a good 10 years before we see any radical difference."

He describes the present situation as 'an extraordinary mess' brought about by a Westminster establishment struggling to come to terms with the will of the people.

"The fatal issue is that we now have a political class which promised it would respect the result of the referendum, but when it received a clear verdict from the people –much clearer than we get at most general elections, we have a House of Commons which is 75 or more per cent against delivering that. That's the origin of the crisis," he says.

"Now there is not a majority in the House of Commons for anything, we have become a laughing stock."

Is there, then, a parallel between the present deadlock and the stand-off between Charles I and the Long Parliament which sparked the English Civil War?

"Not at all. We might have Bercow, a little dwarf, who likes to think he is the Speaker in the Long Parliament, the Lenthall figure, and with people like Oliver Letwin and Dominic Grieve, you might think this is the sort of stuff we have not seen since the 1640s. But at the start of the English Civil War parliament had a leader in John Pym who took control.

"There are no figures like that in parliament today. Most of them would be quite good at running a small town corporation, but they have no sense of nation or national interest. There are no leaders, just petty managers."

He says part of the problem is the rise of the career politician with little life experience outside of politics, and he has a simple solution – stop paying them.

"Everybody seems to believe that if you want to improve the quality of MPs, the answer is to pay them more, but I think the answer would be not to pay them at all," he says.

"Then, you would get MPs who were in it for the right reasons, and they would have to have achieved something in life to be able to do it."

Back to Henry VIII and his six wives, Prof Starkey believes his life was very much shaped by his upbringing. And far from being just a bloodthirsty philanderer, he believes he was actually a romantic at heart.

"You think of the wonderful remark by Dr Johnson that getting married for a second time is a triumph of hope over experience," he says.

"When you have been married six times, you have to think how much experience does the hope have to triumph over?

"He was brought up surrounded by women, unlike most upper-class men of his day – and indeed most upper-class men of today – who were brought up among men and boys.

"I think with all the women he married, it was a case of love at first sight, apart from Anne of Cleaves where it was a case of loathing at first sight.

"He thought that when he fell out of love with them there was no reason to remain married.

"That his how a lot of people think today, but it was quite unusual among the royal family at that time."

Starkey says a lack of understanding about history is a major contributor to many of the problems we face today.

"In a country with an unwritten constitution it is important to know the facts about what has happened before," he says.

He is pessimistic about the way subject is taught in schools today, with too much reliance on concepts such as empathy with how people lived in the past, and not enough on learning historic facts and details. He fears a growing dependence on the internet as a source of facts will make people more susceptible to misinformation.

"Facts are the basis of education, but today we have this attitude that people don't need to learn facts, because they can find them online," he says.

"Empathy is not teaching people anything," he adds.

"If we don't know the facts from our past, we can't possibly know where we are going."

*David Starkey's talk, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIIII will be at Stafford Gatehouse Theatre on October 30 at 7pm. Tickets are priced £17.50.