The Prime Ministers

Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson

Steve Richards

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786495891
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

'Fascinating, revealing and entertaining.' John Humphrys
'A pure pleasure to read.' Polly Toynbee
'Extraordinary.' Kirsty Wark A landmark history of the men and women who have defined the UK's role in the modern world - and what makes them special - by a seasoned political journalist. At a time of unprecedented political upheaval, this magisterial history explains who leads us and why. From Harold Wilson to Theresa May, it brilliantly brings to life all nine inhabitants of 10 Downing Street over the past fifty years, vividly outlining their successes and failures - and what made each of them special. Based on unprecedented access and in-depth interviews, and inspired by the author's BBC Radio 4 and television series, Steve Richards expertly examines the men and women who have defined the UK's role in the modern world and sheds new light on the demands of the highest public office in the land.

1

HAROLD WILSON

Harold Wilson is the most misunderstood of post-war prime ministers. He enjoyed a political honeymoon of intoxicating popularity, with high personal poll ratings and a generous media, from his election as Labour leader in 1963 until soon after his landslide election victory in 1966. Soon after Wilson’s big election win, the way he was perceived changed wildly. Neither his ambitious senior colleagues nor much of an increasingly disdainful media sought to recognize the impossible context in which he made his many energy-draining, stressful and often successful moves. After he ceased to be Labour leader there was little desire to understand Wilson, either. Instead something odd happened. The leader who had dominated British politics during the heady 1960s and for a pivotal part of the dark 1970s became a ghostly figure very quickly. From being the most talked-about figure in British politics for more than a decade, Wilson was rarely referred to. By the time Labour returned to power in 1997 he had become part of ‘Old’ Labour. The Labour Party’s complex past, and its longest-serving leader, were dismissed as being no more than part of a distant chronology that had become irrelevant at best.

Yet the present constantly redefines the past. After 2010, the era of large or landslide election wins had passed. Deeply divided parties struggled to govern and to oppose. Once again a referendum on Europe was contested amidst economic turbulence. Suddenly we were closer to the fragile parts of the Wilson era than we were to the landslide parliaments of 1997 and 2001, or to the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher won huge majorities. For the few who bothered to look, Wilson acquired a new relevance. There were lessons to learn. From being a ghost, he had now become a potential guide.

After the 1964 election Wilson became prime minister with a tiny majority of just four seats. Ten years later he became prime minister in a hung parliament, and then in one with another puny majority. In order to make sense of more recent events, there is an urgent need to understand Wilson, to return him from the shadows. For most of his leadership he led a deeply divided party. The policies that divided Labour included the UK’s relationship with the EU – or the Common Market, as it was known in the Wilson era. Other divisive policy areas included state ownership and nuclear disarmament. After 2010 there were many echoes from the Wilson era.

Most specifically, the echoes relate to Wilson’s final phase in power, which is much overlooked and yet highly significant and instructive. Those final years in power, from 1974 to 1976, reveal partly how leaders are perceived. We choose what we want to see, or what we are told to see, rather than what is in front of our eyes. What we chose to see was an exhausted, paranoid, devious prime minister who had lost all sense of purpose and moral mission. What was happening in front of our eyes was rather different.

The caricature was not a complete distortion. Stereotypes of leaders are always based on an essence of truth, and there was something to the narrowly defined image. Wilson was tired beyond his years. He was only in his late fifties and looked much older. He lacked any great visionary zeal. But he still had spark and the skill to transform a political mood. He could think quickly and strategically. He was artful. He could master complex policy detail.

The lesson about misleading stereotypes applies precisely to the last period of Wilson’s leadership, which began in March 1974 and ended with his resignation in March 1976. These stormy, nightmarishly challenging years highlight vividly the need to go beyond stereotype. This is the period of his leadership that is largely ignored, to the point that it is rarely referred to. Even Wilson’s best biographer, Ben Pimlott, rushes over the final phase of power.¹ In order to learn the Wilsonian lessons, we must start at the end rather than the beginning.

The tired Wilson achieved a range of extraordinary feats in those final two years. Winning in February 1974 was one of them. He only just won. Edward Heath and the Conservative government in power at the time secured more votes, but Wilson’s Labour Party won a handful more seats.² Even so, that narrow win was a significant triumph for Wilson, for several reasons.

The February 1974 election was the most bizarre of modern times, taking place against the backdrop of a miners’ strike, a three-day week under Heath’s government and power cuts. Sometimes Britain was literally in the dark, although wisely Heath lifted some of the tougher restrictions during the campaign itself. Still, it was highly unusual for an election to be contested in the depths of winter, even if most of the lights were fleetingly back on.

Wilson’s narrow win in February 1974 was remarkable, however puny the margin of victory. Above all, no one had expected him to return to power – including Wilson himself. The diaries of his frontbench colleagues from that era are darkly comic. Tony Benn writes towards the end of the February campaign: ‘I saw Harold probably for the last time as Labour leader. He was tired and exhausted.’ Barbara Castle and Roy Jenkins make similar observations. They sensed that Wilson’s career was about to end. Benn, who was often an astute reader of political rhythms, could hardly believe it when he was back in power as a Cabinet minister and wrote in his diary: ‘A week ago, I thought I might be out of parliament altogether and now I’m in the cabinet as Secretary of State for Industry.’³

In his own memoir – an important source for understanding the multi-layered complexities in relation to Wilson – Roy Jenkins wrote: ‘My last encounter with Wilson before polling day was on the final Sunday afternoon when we spoke at a big Birmingham Town Hall meeting and talked for some time afterwards. He seemed tired, depressed and expecting defeat, keeping going with some difficulty and gallantry until by Thursday night he would have completed his final throw in politics. We are both wrong.’⁴ Jenkins returned to government as Home Secretary. He had been a historic reformer as Home Secretary in Wilson’s previous government. After the February 1974 election Jenkins moved back to the Home Office, with much less enthusiasm for the task ahead. Soon he was to leave British politics for Brussels, before returning sensationally to form a new political party.

Wilson was at least as surprised as Jenkins to be in government once again. His senior adviser at the time, Bernard Donoughue, revealed subsequently that Wilson had expected to lose and did not want to give journalists the pleasure of seeing him defeated. Bizarrely, Wilson had planned to hide from the journalists in the aftermath of defeat, arranging for a discreet flight back to London from his Huyton constituency in the north-west of England, without appearing in front of the media at any stage. The deranged plan was for the pilot to land in an obscure part of Bedfordshire, and Wilson would then be driven away to a hidden venue. The idea was wild enough to suggest that, at this late stage in his career, Wilson had lost all reason in relation to his dealings with the media; but then again, parts of the media had given him cause to become irrational. In his early years as leader most newspapers, even the Conservative-supporting ones, had hailed Wilson as a ‘modernizer’. By 1974 all the newspapers, including the non-Conservative ones, had become highly critical of him, to his despair. The BBC had also turned against him. In 1971 it broadcast a programme on Wilson and his shadow Cabinet with the provocative title Yesterday’s Men. Both the title and the programme were not only biased, but wrong. Yesterday’s men were back in power before very long. Wilson was justifiably furious with the BBC. He would have struggled with the later era of rolling TV news and Twitter, when no party leader could even contemplate disappearing from public view in the immediate aftermath of an election. As it turned out for Wilson, there was no need to attempt an elaborate escape. Instead he became prime minister again: quite a spectacular alternative route to determined anonymity.⁵

The assumption that he would lose – often an assumption that feeds on itself – was not the only reason why Wilson’s return from the seemingly political dead was an unusual triumph.

By February 1974 the Labour Party was divided in ways that made it almost impossible to lead. The divisions were unusually intense partly because there were titanic figures on either side of all the epic issues from that era. Leading is easier when mediocrities fall out with each other from within a party. It becomes a nightmare when political giants articulate conflicting visions. From the very top down, Labour was split over Europe, over whether more industries should be nationalized and over the degree to which public spending was the way out of the economic crisis or a contribution to it. These were divisions of unique range. From the late-Thatcher era onwards, the Conservatives were split over Europe, but broadly agreed with each other on economic policy and public-service reforms. Labour’s leading figures did not agree with each other on very much at all.

All the titans around Wilson’s frontbench also enjoyed deep support within the Labour Party. They were impossible to lead, and yet Wilson led them back into government. Those he appointed to his new Cabinet included Denis Healey, James Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Tony Crosland, Shirley Williams, Tony Benn and Michael Foot. This group concurred on very little. In addition, most of them wanted to be leader and regarded Wilson with disdain. But it was Wilson who had taken them back to government. The Labour Cabinet formed in 1974 was the weightiest, most experienced and most charismatic of all the governments elected since 1945. The weight and charisma lit up the political stage and, at the same time, added to the burdens of a prime minister needing to manage big political egos.

There is a third reason why Wilson’s return to power in February 1974 was extraordinary. After he was unexpectedly defeated in June 1970, when someone threw an egg at him for the first time in an election campaign (see Introduction), he almost disappeared from public view. He was deeply disappointed and shaken by defeat. Election outcomes are surprising in their capacity to surprise. Wilson had not expected to win in February 1974. He had not expected to lose in 1970. Almost as a way of coping with the trauma after the 1970 defeat, he kept a low public profile and spent a lot of time writing his memoirs. He was not seen that often in public. Parliament was not televised, so voters did not see or hear his speeches in the Commons. There were no TV news channels following leaders around at every hour of the day. It was much easier to disappear. And Wilson largely disappeared.

In the twenty-first century a leader who unexpectedly loses an election is almost always doomed. Indeed, leaders who lose when they are expected to do so also tend to resign in the immediate aftermath. Wilson discovered what Tony Blair would call a ‘third way’ – a political magician’s third way. He disappeared from public view, but did not resign. He stayed on as leader of the Opposition and won another two elections.

The final two election victories were part of the underestimated phase of his career. He began in February 1974 as prime minister of a minority government. Wisely, he chose not to try to form a coalition; probably that option was not available to him. The outgoing prime minister, Edward Heath, had already sought a coalition with the Liberals and failed.⁶

Wilson liked and admired the leader of the Liberals, Jeremy Thorpe, but kept astutely clear of any negotiation about a partnership in government. Instead when Heath moved out, Wilson moved in, the leader of a single-party minority government. He had become a smart reader of the rhythms of politics, a pivotal qualification for leadership. He knew when to make a move and how to do so. While Heath negotiated with Thorpe over the frenzied weekend after the election, Wilson was filmed walking with his Labrador, seemingly relaxed but ready for action. The only action he contemplated was to be prime minister of a minority Labour government.

If David Cameron had followed Wilson’s precedent after the 2010 election, he might have found the space on the political stage to rule more assertively as a new prime minister and to carry his party with him more authoritatively. Wilson governed for a few months with a minority administration, held a second election – the one where another egg was thrown at him in October – and won a small overall majority. Almost certainly Cameron would have secured a majority in a second election if he had chosen this course, and probably a more substantial majority than Wilson secured. Being younger and far less experienced, Cameron was not as sharp a reader of the complex political rhythms.

Wilson won a tiny overall majority of four seats in October 1974. He thought the margin would be bigger and was disappointed, the third successive election in which he was surprised by the result. But to win an overall majority of any sort in the context in which that election was contested – raging inflation, industrial unrest again, after a brief pause when Labour came to power six months earlier – was another electoral achievement. Above all, establishing Labour as a majority government was near-miraculous, because the party’s divisions over Europe were intensifying.⁷

In a way that Cameron failed to do, Wilson held a referendum on Britain’s membership of the Common Market – and won. He won decisively. In navigating the victory, he made several moves that Cameron did not make when he held, and lost, the referendum on Europe in 2016. Cameron was a world expert on Tony Blair and New Labour, so much so that his leadership was partly an act of imitation. But he would have been well advised to spend more time studying the unfashionable Wilson, leading a party divided over Europe into a referendum.

Wilson’s first smart move was to ensure that the political consequences of merely offering the referendum worked decisively for him. There is no point in a prime minister pledging a referendum, with all the risks involved, unless the offer in itself works for the leader.

He was a reluctant convert to the idea of a referendum on Europe. Like Cameron, he pledged to hold one not because he had discovered a passion for direct democracy, but to prevent his party from splitting fatally over the issue. Wilson made the offer well in advance of the elections in 1974 and his party calmed down a little. There was an acceptance that the referendum would settle the issue, that Cabinet ministers would publicly disagree with each other during the campaign and that the voters would decide.

The sequence before the formal referendum campaign was rather messier under Cameron. There was a fundamental difference. The Conservative prime minister had hoped to persuade all of his Cabinet to support the case for staying in the EU. Cameron felt an intense sense of betrayal when some of his Cabinet, particularly Michael Gove, came out against remaining in the EU. The stakes were high as he embarked on his renegotiation, precisely because he had hopes of convincing most, or all, of his Cabinet to back him.⁸

Wilson had no such hopes for his Cabinet. He knew, from the beginning of his renegotiation, that his ministers would be split on the issue. Ironically, the overt scale of the division in the Labour government simplified matters. Wilson had given up hoping for unity long ago. The knowledge of the split helped him, crucially, in limiting the significance of his ‘renegotiation’ of the UK’s membership of the Common Market. But while the prospect of a referendum had cooled the political temperature in Wilson’s party in some respects, Cameron’s offer rais...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Introduction
• 1. Harold Wilson
• 2. Edward Heath
• 3. James Callaghan
• 4. Margaret Thatcher
• 5. John Major
• 6. Tony Blair
• 7. Gordon Brown
• 8. David Cameron
• 9. Theresa May
• 10. Boris Johnson
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Illustration Credits
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Plates