Barbara Castle, John Stuart Mill, Neil Kinnock, Paddy Ashdown, Iain Macleod and Frank Field share a common claim to fame.

They have all been named, along with many others, as the parliamentary heroes of today’s politicians.

But Gordon Brown and David Cameron have ignored the case for former leaders of their parties and opted for MPs who made their names on the backbenches.

Nick Clegg has emerged as the traditionalist, picking William Gladstone, the four-time Liberal prime minister, when he responded to a survey organised by Dods, the political information specialists, as part of their ‘Your Parliament Exhibition’.

The Prime Minister passed over the claims of Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson to name as his hero James Maxton, the socialist and pacifist who campaigned against Britain’s involvement in the first world war, and was a key figure in the Red Clydeside movement in the era of radicalism that characterised Glasgow early in the last century.

Mr Brown admits in his citation that Mr Maxton, who neither sought nor achieved high office nor pushed through any big private Member’s legislation, might seem an “odd choice.”

However, he writes: “He was motivated solely by improving the lot of the children he had met as a school teacher, and the unemployed men and women he represented as MP. In rejecting both the incendiary politics of the ultra-left and the compromises of the MacDonald government he ploughed a very modern middle way focused entirely on what would deliver for his constituents on Red Clydeside.

Mr Brown, who wrote a book about Maxton, adds: “Churchill called him the greatest parliamentarian of his day; he still has much to teach us in our own.”

For the Conservative leader it was not Baroness Thatcher or Churchill or Macmillan. He opted for Ian Gow, one of Lady Thatcher’s most trusted confidants, who was killed by the IRA in 1990. Mr Gow, credited with playing a leading role in the Thatcher revolution, was a passionate defender of Northern Ireland’s place in the Union, a stance for which he was to pay with his life.

Mr Cameron writes that Mr Gow asked him as a young researcher to help with a speech he was making in 1989, and had given him hours of his time, explaining Parliament and particuarly the Commons.

“He was intelligent and incredibly polite and made a huge imprssion on me. I remember after the speech-writing was over we went over to the Pugin Room where we both drank White Ladies ( a gin cocktail) - a first for me. Ian was a genuinely brave. intelligent, charming and thoughtful man, whom I was lucky to meet.”

Mr Clegg goes for Gladstone. “His battles with Benjamin Disraeli across the floor of the Commons were an extraordinary clash of philosphies, style and character. Today’s soundbite driven Punch and Judy debates are a weak echo of the great oratorical contests of Gladstone’s day.”

Times Recommends

• Should Knox’s trial even have reached the courtroom?
• All that glitters is not sold in Wright’s world
• Believe it or not, Big Brother is your friend