He has been (rightly) criticised for pulling his party out of the centre-right grouping in the European Parliament to which the parties of Mrs Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, belong, and for cultivating the Euroscepticism of his party faithful.
Lord Heseltine noted that local councils had long had the right to switch to elected mayors, but few had done so - not least because councillors rightly concluded that powerful elected mayors drained power from them.
Perry rightly argues that giving the children of illegal immigrants access to Texas higher education is not only the right thing to do, but the cheapest way for the state to tackle the problems associated with this demographic.