In case you missed it – easily done amid this week's reshuffle kerfuffle – seven pastel-coloured "power suits" worn by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went under the hammer on Monday and raised a total of £73,125.

The Iron Lady has few fans north of the Border, but in the wake of Monday's auction even those Scots who spit when her name is mentioned have to admit that she did at least bring a little colour to the grey, grey world of political attire.

She certainly gave far more thought to her clothes than any Prime Minister since, whose contribution to fashion has been to teach us that very posh men don't wear wedding rings and ... er, that's it.

"Appalling" is how Vivienne Westwood described Tony Blair's dress sense when she ran into his wife at a Buck House beano in 2004, but the same word could be used to describe the clothes worn by John Major and (with bells on) Gordon Brown. Scotland's First Ministers would fare no better by the Westwood yardstick, though when he stepped out in a pinstripe kilt and a flouncy Jacobite shirt, you couldn't say Jack McConnell wasn't making some kind of style statement.

But while today's male politicians are mostly a dowdy bunch who think flamboyant dressing is wearing a pink tie on Newsnight, Parliament hasn't always been an entirely fashion-free zone. Benjamin Disraeli, for one, was a famously natty dresser. A fellow guest at a dinner party he attended in 1833 described his clobber thus: "a black velvet coat lined with satin, purple trousers with a gold band running down the outside seam, a scarlet waistcoat, long lace ruffles." He was also wearing white gloves "with several rings outside them". Move over will.i.am, make room for Ben.i.am.

In the 20th century, Winston Churchill was another who wasn't afraid of shaking things up, whether with his polka dot bow ties or his trademark headgear. His favoured homburg hat was actually popularised by a previous Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, but Churchill put his own mark on millinery history by turning up to the Yalta peace conference in a fur hat that one newspaper described dismissively as "a caracul shapka of the type favoured by Muscovite shopkeepers."

Of course, I'm not saying our political class should give free rein to their more outlandish sartorial impulses. That's how you end up with Boris Johnson in a Hawaiian shirt. But in a week in which "presentation" is the hot political buzzword, perhaps they should remember that to sell the ideas, they first have to sell themselves. Call me shallow, but if my reaction to seeing Jeremy Hunt on Newsnight is "Wow, cool suit-shirt-shoes combo" then I might just listen to what he has to say – instead of shouting at him. n