BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN

Look around you. Cast your eye across the sclerotic state of our nation – the rudderless ship of government, the suffocating blanket of nanny-state regulation, the timid hand-wringing in the face of genuine threats, and the sheer, unadulterated dullness of it all. We are governed by managerial technocrats, men and women whose greatest ambition is to navigate a focus group, whose boldest vision extends to a new cycle lane or a tax on meat. They speak in sanitised platitudes, their spines seemingly replaced by polling data. In this landscape of the mediocre, one’s soul aches for a figure of verve, of audacity, of sheer chutzpah. We need, in short, a Sir Francis Drake.

Not the sanitised, portrait-gazing version, mind. We need the real, salt-caked, God-fearing, Queen-loving, Spaniard-baiting Drake. The man who looked at a globe and saw not borders, but opportunities. Who understood that greatness is not conferred by committee, but seized by the courageous.

Consider our current predicament. We are told to lower our ambitions, to ‘manage expectations’, to accept decline as inevitable. Our leaders approach the world with the cautious demeanour of an accountant surveying a slightly risky investment. Contrast this with the Devon sailor who, upon hearing of Spanish treasures in the New World, didn’t form a working group or commission a feasibility study. He fitted out ships, gathered a crew of like-minded souls, and went to fetch it. The man had panache. He played bowls before facing the Armada, for goodness’ sake. Can you imagine a modern minister doing anything so defiantly nonchalant? They’d be issuing a statement on the importance of maritime leisure activities while simultaneously activating a crisis management protocol.

Drake’s genius was a peculiarly English blend: profound loyalty to the Crown coupled with a fiercely independent, entrepreneurial spirit. He was a privateer – a state-sanctioned free-marketeer of the high seas. He raised capital, managed vast logistical enterprises, and delivered staggering returns for his investors (not least the Treasury). He was, dare we say it, a Brexiteer 400 years before the fact. He saw a world dominated by a monstrous, overbearing continental superpower – the Spanish Empire – and refused to be cowed by its dictates. He didn’t seek to ‘align with EU regulations’; he singed the King of Spain’s beard. He understood that sometimes, to secure peace and prosperity, you must demonstrate an unwavering capacity for action, even aggression.

Today, we are led by dullards who apologise for our history whilst failing to create any of note themselves. They would, one suspects, indict Drake for piracy, reprimand him for carbon emissions from his galleons, and demand he complete a diversity and inclusion course for his treatment of Spanish priests. They miss the point entirely. Drake was a man of his time, yes, but he possessed timeless qualities: resilience, audacity, supreme competence, and an unwavering belief in the destiny of his nation.

We face new Armadas. Economic stagnation. Cultural capitulation. A sense of national aimlessness. We do not need a Drake to literally set sail and plunder galleons (tempting as that may be to the overtaxed citizen). But we desperately need leaders imbued with his spirit. We need that boldness of vision to break free from stagnant orthodoxies. We need that operational brilliance to get things done – to build, to champion enterprise, to cut through the red tape that strangles our island spirit. We need that unshakeable self-confidence, that refusal to be dictated to by foreign powers or domestic miserablists.

Where is the chutzpah? Where is the man or woman who will look at the mapped conventions of our age, declare ‘sic parvis magna’ – greatness from small beginnings – and dare to chart a new course? We are languishing in a calm of their making, a stagnant pond of their own bureaucracy. We need a storm. We need a Drake to whip up the waves, fill the sails, and force us to remember who we are and what we are capable of.

Until such a figure emerges, we are doomed to be led by the small, the cautious, the grey. And a nation of Drakes’ descendants deserves so very much better.

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Dominic Wightman is the Editor of Country Squire Magazine, works in finance, and is the author of five and a half books including Conservatism (2024).