Of all the commentary on the fall of David Blunkett, I haven’t seen the most obvious explanation, namely that the former Home Secretary paid the price for being the lone Roundhead riding with a troop of Spectator Cavaliers. I sometimes wonder if the English Civil War ever truly ended. It started only 360-odd years ago, after all, and we see evidence for the continuing conflict all around. And, as in the 1640s, dividing the country in the Noughties into Cavalier and Roundhead camps is not purely a question of class or money, but also one of taste and temperament. In normal circumstances, in peacetime as it were, we can admit that each camp has its virtues. But when the two camps clash, you have to decide whose side you are on.

David Blunkett allowed himself to be taken prisoner by people who play by different rules. His success, like that of all Roundheads, was built on hard work, moral probity, mastery of detail, self-denial, self-effacement, above all on self-discipline. Cavaliers aren’t made that way. They rely on flamboyance, connections, delegating the menial tasks to others, self-promotion, the big picture, big gestures, taking risks . . . and having really interesting hair.

I’ve seen it happen a dozen times. Serious, hardworking Roundhead boy from the Midlands, or the North, or Scotland, comes down to Oxford or Bristol or London, does well, gets some power or status, attracts the interest of a passing Cavalier patrol. The Roundhead boy, after a lifetime of saying no, sorry, can’t come out to play, starts to say yes, and for a while he discovers what fun it is to have fun. But he can’t ditch his old ways of thinking so easily, can’t find the lightness of touch or tone that comes so naturally to his new friends, and he wants to impress them, and he wants all at once the cachet and money their families might have taken generations to accumulate.

He takes it all too seriously, the Roundhead boy, is in too much of a hurry, runs into trouble, doesn’t have the insouciance to shrug off his accusers, knows in his bones that what he’s done is wrong. And then his own camp turns on him and he’s finished. And the Cavaliers?

Well, they’re great at leading the charge at a party, but when the mopping up needs doing in the morning, they’ve generally fled the field.

I sympathise with David Blunkett. I’m from Hull, a city possibly even more Roundhead in outlook than Blunkett’s native Sheffield. In 1642, when King Charles I arrived to collect his arsenal from Hull before the start of Civil War, Sir John Hotham, the city’s governor, shut the gate in his monarch’s face. Lacy cuffs? Long curly hair? Deferring to lesser men by virtue of their birth, education or wealth? I don’t think so. In Hull, you wear so much as a coat, let alone a big floppy purple hat with a feather in it, you’re getting above yourself.

And then I went to Oxford University and, having never met a true Cavalier before, for a while, I met nothing but. People for whom life divided not into right and wrong but fun and boring. People who could do dazzling, but never detail. The Cavalier-Roundhead distinction was both a help and a hindrance to me. A help because I used it as a way of retaining my identity in the great Anglican Tory royalist institution that was Oxford and a hindrance because I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I should have done. Over the years I’ve learnt to let my guard down slightly. Dancing, for instance: I allow myself to do that now. Sometimes. And borrowing money. But not very much. I even bought a pink shirt recently, not that I’d wear it east of the Trent. I reckon I might be 80-20 per cent Roundhead-Cavalier now, and that’s enough. Anything more would be dangerous.

The Cavalier-Roundhead divide has been with us for centuries, but it is especially relevant now that the old upper-lower class distinctions, the old left-right political distinctions and indeed the old high church-low church religious distinctions are much less stark than they were. And, while Cavaliers tend to be wealthier than Roundheads, the divide isn’t just about money. Bill Gates, the wealthiest man in the world, is a Roundhead (although, thanks in part to the export of many English revolutionaries there after the Restoration, most Americans are). And you could argue that the blond streaks, ear-rings, tattoos and pastel sportswear on show on estates up and down the kingdom are the hallmarks of would-be Cavaliers.

The divide is as much a matter of personality, aesthetic and appearance as it is background, religion or party allegiance. You don’t have to be a Conservative to be a Cavalier, or Labour to be a Roundhead. Ann Widdecombe is a Roundhead. Mo Mowlam was a Cavalier.

And just as the Earls of Essex and Manchester fought for Parliament, modern day toffs can also cross the divide. The most daring example would be the Queen herself. Cavaliers would die for their monarch, and yet that monarch looks and feels and acts like a Roundhead: responsible, dutiful, serious-minded, humble. (This makes life very difficult for us Republicans. If Princess Margaret had been born first, it’s possible the whole Windsor show would be over by now). The Princess Royal? Another Roundhead. The Prince of Wales, however, he’s a true Cavalier, both in the sense of being a bit of an amateur, but also in the original 1642 sense, a hardline Divine Right man. With his toothpaste-slave and his “Call me Sir”, the future Charles III is practically Charles I come back to life.

Maggie Thatcher may have been a bright blue peacock in a Cabinet of very grey pigeons, but in the important respects she was a classic Roundhead, right down to the non-conformism and the East Midlands childhood. Conversely, Derry Irvine, and the twin Charlies — Falconer and Kennedy — are all Cavaliers. Peter Mandelson is a failed Cavalier.

Zac Goldsmith is a Cavalier trying so hard to be a Roundhead, it’s painful. Tony Blair is a bit trickier. Like Maggie, he can swing both ways, the Prime Minister, embody two sets of normally exclusive virtues simultaneously. That’s part of his political genius. He can do puritan, can Blair, but on balance, given his theatricality, and the way he seems to get easily bored, and his impatience with ideology, and his fancy manners, I would chalk him up for the King.

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