ABSTRACT
‘The worst prime minister since Lord North’ was for long a political cliche. Specialist scholarship in recent decades has to a large extent rehabilitated North’s reputation. There was no party system: recent attempts to resurrect the old idea of a Whig-Tory alignment at this time, even extending to the claim that North headed a Tory party of government, have foundered on the rocks of historical evidence. Attention to North's Irish policy has tended to focus on the problems arising out of the American War, and thereby to overlook the most important decision he made concerning Ireland, as soon as he became prime minister. It is curious, and unfair, that his failure to act then should be the main reason for the general charge of indecision levied against him by both contemporaries and historians: North knew what had to be done, but was unable to act until circumstances changed.
