ABSTRACT
A major and recurrent theme of reports about the new Labour government is the way in which the administration is obsessed with the image it presents. It is a theme implicit throughout The Prince, Machiavelli’s pioneering study of statecraft:
…for as those who wish to delineate countries place themselves low in the plain to observe the form and character of mountains and high places, and for the purpose of studying the nature of the low country place themselves high upon an eminence, so one must be a prince to know well the character of the people, and to understand well the nature of a prince one must be of the people.
