Argyll's political career opens a window onto the ‘British problem’, reflecting in microcosm an image of the world of British politics. It reveals many of the inherent tensions bedevilling the relationships between the three kingdoms, particularly after 1603. In particular, Argyll personified the choice facing Scottish and Irish Gaelic nobles between confrontation or harmonisation of the Anglophone and Gaelic cultures within the Atlantic archipelago. Before mature British politics had been created by the multiple monarchy, the 5th earl confronted the hurdle faced by future British politicians, especially those based in Scotland or Ireland, which was the fundamental conflict of attitudes towards the islands of Britain themselves.

Argyll's British policy contained two elements. The first was its British idiom: the ability to see the interconnections between the three kingdoms and, at the level of conceptual thinking, create a British strategy. The second was a corollary: the capacity to integrate national and regional objectives within a single scheme, unifying the elements in the service of a British goal. His own British perspective had grown out of his experience of moving between the separate political arenas of Gaeldom and Anglo-Scottish relations, where he operated in multiple cultural and conceptual worlds and found solutions to transect frontiers. By contrast, his contemporaries and most future politicians were tied to a single political world, with little understanding or appreciation of other viewpoints.