Book review: British General Election campaigns, 1830-2019

The story of the General Election of 2024 or 2025 is still largely unwritten. Even the date of it is still unknown although we do know it can be no later than January 2025. Are the opinion polls right in predicting a victory for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party or will Rishi Sunak pull off an unexpected Conservative victory? Will the result be a landslide as it was for New Labour in 1997 and 2001 or a Hung Parliament as occurred in 2010 and 2017? Will the SNP vote collapse? Will Reform UK split the Tory vote? Will the Liberal Democrats make a comeback? Only time will tell.

This book takes us through the last fifty British General Elections starting just before the Great Reform Act of 1832 to Boris Johnson shattering the Labour “Red Wall” in December 2019. Each election is covered in an essay by a different author. Michael Crick covers Edward Heath’s unexpected 1970 victory, Peter Snow discusses Margaret Thatcher’s post-Falklands 1983 landslide and so on.

As we generally have never had fixed term parliaments, sometimes elections have become frequent, especially when things are unstable. In 1910 and 1974, there were two General Elections within the space of a year. There were five during the politically turbulent 1830s and four apiece during the uncertainties of the 1920s, 1970s and 2010s. On the other hand, Prime Ministers also went to the country four times during the 1950s, a period usually remembered as being relatively placid. And there were no elections at all between 1935 and 1945 as a result of the Second World War. The 1945 contest saw many thirty-year-olds, having survived six years of war, getting the opportunity to vote in a national elections for the very first time.

Turnout has varied, peaking at 86.8% in January 1910 (at the height of the furore over David Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget”) but reaching a low of 53.4% in 1847. No election has enjoyed a turnout of more than 80% since the Churchill comeback election of 1951. No election has received a 70% turnout since the year of Tony Blair’s first great landslide in 1997. None of the General Elections held in the 20th century ever saw turnout ever drop below 70%. Thus far all six of the elections held in the 21st century have done so. Only 59.4% turned out to ensure Tony Blair beat William Hague in 2001. 68.8% voted in the election which saw Theresa May beat Jeremy Corbyn in 2017.

No party has ever won a majority of votes cast in any of these General Elections except for the Conservatives in 1886 (51.4%),1900 (50.2%) 1931 (55%) and the Liberals (previously known as the Whigs) in eleven elections between 1832 and 1880, a period during which they dominated a political environment in which there was only one other political party. Seats wise, the Tories peaked, winning 412 seats in the 1924 vote which defeated the first ever Labour government but won the least seats (157) in the year of the 1906 Liberal landslide. The Liberals, in contrast, won the most MPs they ever won in the first ever election in which statistics are available: 441 in 1832. They won just six MPs three times during the lows of the 1950s and achieved that number again in 1970. The newly formed Labour Party, meanwhile, won just two seats in the first election of the 20th century (1900) before hitting their highest ever figure of 419 in the very last one (1997).

In the first 22 of these 50 General Elections, no women were allowed to vote at all.

Statistics aside, some elections have had very surprising outcomes: few predicted Attlee’s Labour landslide in 1945, Ted Heath’s win in 1970, Harold Wilson’s return in early 1974 or John Major’s victory in 1992. Few observers expected Cameron to win a majority in 2015 or that Theresa May would lose it again in 2017.

In the TV age, some politicians have thrived under the glare of the cameras, see Harold Macmillan, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair. Some conspicuously haven’t: see Edward Heath, Michael Foot, Gordon Brown or Ed Miliband. The 2010 election remains the only contest to be significantly enlivened by a round of televised leadership debates. At the time, these greatly boosted the profile of Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg. Yet ultimately the brief wave of “Cleggmania” seemed to yield his party no electoral advantage whatsoever.

Some campaigns have seen our leaders laid low: Churchill’s “Gestapo” speech. Thatcher’s wobbly Thursday. The Prescott punch. Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman.” Some have threatened to be blown off course by random unexpected factors: the Zinoviev Letter. Enoch Powell’s last minute defection. The War of Jennifer’s Ear. The Foot and Mouth outbreak. The Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.

Some elections end up being defined by memorable slogans: Safety First. Let Us Face The Future Together. Labour Isn’t Working. Get Brexit Done.

What will define the coming contest? We will soon find out. In the meantime, this volume offers plenty of fresh insights into the battles of the past.

Book review: British General Election campaigns, 1830-2019: The 50 General Election campaigns that shaped our modern politics. Edited by Iain Dale. Published by Biteback. March 26th 2024.

Podcast review 3: Political Currency

What is it?: A decade ago, they were fierce political rivals. George Osborne was the Tory Chancellor who presided over austerity, while Ed Balls, the then Shadow Chancellor was his staunchest opponent. Today, both men are out of parliament and get on reasonably well. Here, they discuss politics in an hourlong weekly podcast released every Thursday. A shorter EMQ (Ex-Minister’s Questions) version of the podcast appears every Monday, in which the two men answer listener questions. Occasional extra podcasts will appear in the event of something interesting happening such as Osborne’s old friend and ally, David Cameron being appointed Foreign Secretary or a Budget. Balls’ and Osborne’s backgrounds ensure there is a strong economic focus to the programme.

History: Political Currency was launched in September 2023 by Acast. As of March 2024, there have been over forty episodes released. I have listened to roughly half of them.

Format: Although it has not yet succeeded in toppling Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart from the top of the UK podcast tree, Political Currency actually scores over The Rest is Politics in a number of ways:

1) It has a kickass theme tune with extracts from Balls and Osborne’s more colourful political exchanges played over the top of it.

 2) Balls and Osborne really were political rivals back in the day. They actually genuinely seemed to dislike each other. In contrast, The RIP team were never truly rivals: Stewart’s career as an MP only really began after Campbell’s heyday was over.

3) Although both opposed Brexit and are reasonably sane and centrist on most things, Osborne really is still a bit of a Tory (he claims to personally like Liz Truss, amongst other odd things). A common criticism of TRP is that there is not enough genuine political difference between the two men as while Campbell (like Balls) is still clearly in the Labour camp, Stewart is clearly no longer a Tory. This is not the case here.

I currently listen to both TRIP and this regularly, but I suspect TRIP still has the edge. This is probably partly because Osborne basically isn’t as likeable as Rory Stewart is. While there are certainly many far more horrifying beasts walking around the Tory jungle, it’s difficult to feel as  much warmth towards Osborne, a man spent the Cameron years, cutting budgets and closing libraries as it is for Stewart, a man whose decade in politics really did seem to be a based around a frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to really make a positive difference.

The Rest is Politics perhaps covers international affairs more thoroughly than Political Currency which tends to focus more heavily on financial matters. Focusing on economics certainly isn’t a bad thing at all. But personally, I am less interested in those bits, so from my point of view the fixation on economics does slightly count against them.

There is usually one dominant partner in any podcast double-act and Osborne always feels like the main man here. Ultimately, both he and Balls are interesting and intelligent men with genuinely interesting political careers behind them. There is a threat to the future, however. Balls is married to Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper. Would Cooper’s appointment to a senior position in a future Labour government render Balls’ position on the podcast unsustainable?

Only time will tell.

Book review: Family Politics, by John O’Farrell

What would you do if your son suddenly turned into a Tory?
This is the crisis which confronts middle-aged Hastings couple, Eddie and Emma, in this, John O’Farrell’s first new novel since 2015.
For Eddie and Emma are both ardent, lifelong card-carrying Labour Party members. Eddie even harbours ambitions of office: he is already on the local candidate’s list and has high hopes of running for parliament. The news that their son, Dylan, has returned from university, a sudden and enthusiastic convert to the party which brought us austerity, Brexit and the disastrous but mercifully brief premiership of Liz Truss, thus comes as something of a shock to them.
O’Farrell made his name writing the hilarious comic memoir, Things Can Only Get Better and I suspect Tory supporters (currently something of a minority breed) may enjoy this book rather less than the rest of us. But the novel is fairly even-handed and O’Farrell is happy to poke fun at Eddie and Emma’s Labour-supporting ways too. Otherwise, with the General Election looming, this is a funny, good-natured book, full of solid jokes and with an underlying message emphasising the importance of recognising the importance of tolerance and learning to live with people who have political views different to our own.

Podcast review 2: The Rest is Politics

What is it?: Onetime New Labour spin doctor, Alastair Campbell and 2019 Conservative leadership contender, Rory Stewart discuss the latest political developments both in the UK and around the world. The regular podcast which is usually less than an hour long appears every Wednesday. A special Question Time edition devoted to answering listeners’ questions appears on Thursdays. Occasional ‘Emergency’ podcasts appear when something deemed to be urgent has happened e.g. a sudden ministerial resignation.

History: Since launching in March 2022, TRIP has become the most successful of Goalhanger’s Rest Is… brand and is consistently one of the most listened to podcasts in the UK. As of the end of March 2024, there have been over 220 episodes, of which I have listened to well over 200 so far. A spin-off podcast, The Rest Is Politics Leading in which Stewart and Campbell interview someone is only slightly less successful and has released sixty episodes every Monday since the start of 2023.

Format: The podcast works on the principle that the two men should always “disagree agreeably” thus avoiding any serious argument. By and large, this works. Despite the ostensibly Labour versus Tory nature of the set-up, the two are not actually poles apart politically anyway. Although a lifelong Labourite, Campbell was expelled from the party after encouraging people to vote tactically for the Lib Dems. After nine years as an MP, Stewart lost the Tory whip in 2019 as a result of his campaign to prevent a no-deal Brexit and has never attempted to re-join the Tories. Both men believe leaving the EU has been a disaster and strongly dislike populist politicians like Trump, Johnson and Truss.

Both have interesting backgrounds. Campbell is the older, more assertive and slightly better known of the two. He remains fiercely tribal and proud of the Blair government’s record in office. He is scathing of the honours system and the public schools which Rory (an old Etonian) is a product of. He is disparaging about the Tory record on austerity and while not an uncritical champion of Keir Starmer, basically still wants Labour to win. His support for the centre-left is matched only by his enthusiasm for Burnley FC. He has also been open about his battles with his own mental health, once revealing he was in the middle of a depressive episode on air.

Rory Stewart, in contrast, has a colourful background which in addition to his years in parliament includes experience on the ground of Afghanistan and Iraq. He knows from personal experience that the likes of Johnson and Truss are grossly ill-suited to high office: he has worked alongside and under them. He remains deeply disillusioned with the Tories of today and seems resigned to the fact they are headed for opposition, but has thus far held back from endorsing Labour. He sometimes speaks up for individual members like Alex Chalk and Gillian Keegan who he likes. He seems to be hoping the Tories will one day return to a position where he feels he can support them again.

He is well-spoken, intelligent and cultured. Until 2019, he tallied exactly with Michael Foot’s famous description of Iain Macleod as “the most intelligent man in the Silly Party.” He has a strong attachment to traditions and institutions like the monarchy and the House of Lords. At the same time, he remains disillusioned by many of the failings of the political system which prevented him from making as much progress as he would have liked in office.

Thus far Rory and Alastair have only fallen out seriously on air once, when Alastair felt Rory was criticising the Blair government’s efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland. There were also tensions last year when Rory subjected Alastair to vigorous scrutiny over his role in the build up to the war in Iraq, twenty years earlier.

But generally, this is the perfect double-act to host one of the UK’s finest political podcasts.

Podcast review 1: The Rest is History

What is it?: Historians and old friends, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss a variety of historical themes, usually for about forty or fifty minutes, two or three times a week.

History: As of January 23rd 2024, there have been 411 episodes, of which I have listened to just over 150. The podcast has been produced by Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger podcasts since its inception in November 2020. It is a success and can usually be seen hovering either within or close to the top ten on lists of the most successful podcasts in the UK. It has inspired a whole range of “The Rest of” podcasts also produced by Goalhanger such as The Rest is … Politics, Football, Business and Entertainment. All of these have also been successful (TRI Politics and TRI Entertainment often overtaking TRI History in popularity), even though, title-wise, only “the rest is history” is ever used as a common, everyday expression.

Format: Tom and Dominic are clearly old chums. Both are professional historians. Both are middle-aged men. Tom (who should not be confused with the 27-year-old Spiderman actor of the same name) is in his fifties, while Dominic will turn fifty in 2024. The tone is light, a world away from the stuffy, “That’s you that is” historians once portrayed by Rob Newman and David Baddiel. Like Newman and Baddiel, however, they do occasionally make each other break into laughter on air, sometimes not for obvious reasons.

Dominic’s speciality is modern history, Tom is better on the ancient world. This distinction is illustrated by the show’s logo which depicts Tom in the form of a Classical statue while Dominic is portrayed as a Churchillian bust. Both men will discuss every topic. Subject matter covered in the last year has included President Kennedy’s assassination, the Aztec Empire, the rise of the Nazis, Columbus, Reagan, Baghdad, Captain Cook and British fascism. The scope of the series is impressive. Subjects are always covered thoroughly and well. Guests (including Tom’s military historian brother) are sometimes invited in to discuss areas on which Tom and Dom are less confident. Novelist Zadie Smith appeared recently to talk about the Tichborne Claimant) while Stephen Fry was in an early Lockdown-era episode.

History boys: Tom Holland (not that one) and Dominic Sandbrook.

Running jokes: Tom is obsessed with cricket and is a big fan of Prince Edward who once praised one of his books. Dom often writes for the Daily Mail although is less reactionary than this makes him sound. However, he does admit to despising John Lennon and occasionally gets lost in a patriotic fervour. Tom also admits to being a big Tony Blair fan although generally the pod avoids discussing 21st century politics, particularly since The Rest is Politics started in 2022. Although not obviously religious himself, Tom is sometimes accused of finding a way to discuss religion within any subject they are discussing. Dominic is probably the more dominant of the two personalities. Tom can be slightly camp.

Historical figures who crop up a lot in Tom and Dom’s discussions, such as Otto von Bismarck are typically described as “very much a friend of The Rest is History.” The duo are also easily distracted by a silly name such as Estes Kefauver, Perkin Warbeck or Tiberius van Ladypleaser. I may have made one of these names up.

Optional extras: Fans can now buy a The Rest is History or get episodes, early and ad-free by joining The Rest is History Club. I am definitely a fan of the podcast, but have resisted both of these options thus far. I generally don’t mind waiting for episodes (I don’t listen to them all anyway). I also don’t mind the short commercial breaks (which are usually for The Week magazine or something).

Criticism: By far the worst aspect of The Rest is History is the tendency to introduce each episode with a quotation often delivered with an excruciating impersonation of the person being quoted. I have no problem with the quotes themselves, but I doubt anyone enjoys hearing Tom impersonating the likes of Hitler and Marilyn Monroe as much as he does performing it. Dominic is equally guilty in this regard. This aspect of the show which is already delivered with an attitude of “we know this bit’s crap but we’re going to it anyway” should be stopped immediately.

Overall: “The history book on the shelf. It’s always repeating itself.” So sang Abba, on their Eurovision-winning hit, Waterloo, fifty years ago. Happily, The Rest is History rarely repeats itself. It is a first-class podcast which you will find yourself returning to, again and again.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps, by David (1801).

TV review: The Crown. Season 6, Episode 10: Sleep, Dearie Sleep

The Queen (Imelda Staunton). In the end, even God couldn’t save her

It’s the end of an era.

After seven years, six series and sixty episodes, Netflix’s The Crown has finally come to an end. Rather than going right up to the present and allowing us to see the cast watching their own early lives being dramatized on TV, the story concludes in 2005, with Charles’s relatively low-key wedding to the love of his life, Camilla Parker-Bowles (Dominic West and Olivia Williams). Had Charles followed his instincts and done this about thirty years earlier, one imagines The Crown would have only needed four series, rather than six. But we’ll never know now, will we?

As it is, Season Six has contained more than its fair share of genuinely crazy moments, notably some cameo appearances from the ghosts of Diana and Dodi Fayed (Elizabeth Debicki and Khalid Abdalla) following their deaths in the 1997 Paris road crash. And guess what? There are more ghosts in this episode (sort of) as the eighty-year-old Queen (Imelda Staunton) is haunted by the spirits of her younger self. We thus see the monarch engaging in conversation with her middle-aged Elizabeth (a welcome return visit to The Crown for Olivia Colman) and later, the younger version from the dawn of her reign (again, good to see Claire Foy from the first two series again) The Queen even gets a quick salute from her teenaged self, played by young Claire Foy lookalike, Viola Prettejohn, who played the teenaged Princess Elizabeth in the wartime scenes of the recent Ritz episode.

The three faces of Queendom: maiden, mother and er…crone

The final Crown ends with Imelda’s Queen walking boldly forward (chess fans will know, Queens can go as far as they like in any direction, as long as its in a straight line) with Colman and Foy following her on either side. It’s a bit like one of those old Doctor Who episodes where all the Doctors (e.g. Hartnell, Troughton and Pertwee) get to meet up in the Tardis simultaneously. Thankfully, unlike Doctor Who, the Queen never had to undergo the awkward and painful process of ‘regeneration’ as she morphed from one actress into another. As her first Prince Philip (Doctor Who Number 11, Matt Smith) could have told her, this would have been no picnic.

Anyway, the purpose of resurrecting these earlier models of the QE2 is to allow us to see the Queen airing her private thoughts as she contemplates announcing her abdication during a speech at Charles’s wedding. Did you know the Queen came very close to doing this? Chances are, you didn’t, simply because it never happened. There is no real evidence that the Queen ever considered abdicating at any point ever. Even if she had done, it’s hardly likely she would have announced her decision on the day of Charles’s wedding. Even in non-royal circles announcing big news during somebody’s else’s wedding ceremony is considered a breach of etiquette.

In this version, the Queen is contemplating abdication as a result of feelings of mortality generated by news of the continuing preparation of Operation London Bridge: the long-running plans for her own state funeral. These plans were first prepared in the Sixties, but were, of course, not put into practice until 2022. By choosing to stay on, the Queen realises she is effectively condemning Britons in the 21^st century to nearly twenty more years of monarchy under one very old Queen followed by decades of kingship under several old men. Not that there’s ever any real drama generated over whether the Queen is going to stand down in 2005 or not. Obviously, she didn’t! Even The Crown would never get away with changing history that much.

Instead, the Queen throws away the handwritten bit of paper announcing her retirement on the spur of the moment. She then launches into a surprisingly irreverent speech reminiscent of a stand-up comedy routine. She only just stops short of taking the piss out of Harry (Luther Ford) for dressing up as a Nazi or joking that she was, in fact, guilty of killing Diana.

The Crown thus ends with the series, like perhaps the nation, much weaker at the end than it was at the start. Charles is at least happy to be finally married to Camilla. William (Ed McVey) is going out with Cate (Meg Bellamy) after seeing her wearing a see-through dress at a fashion show. Wills and Harry are already feuding. Tony Blair (Bertie Carvel), who was recently so popular that the Queen (according to The Crown) envied him to the extent that she was having bizarre dreams in which the founder of New Labour replaced her as monarch, is now unpopular again thanks to the Iraq War. In fact, this isn’t quite true: Blair did win a substantial General Election victory in 2005 and was still fairly popular when he himself stood down two years later. Perhaps writer Peter Morgan feels as if he has to make amends for giving Blair (then played by Michael Sheen) such an easy ride in his screenplay for Stephen Frears’s 2006 film, The Queen. We are spared dramatized versions of Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson or Truss.

We last see the Queen (Staunton) walking slowly across an empty room, then disappearing through a door, a scene presumably intended to illustrate the final seventeen years of her reign followed by her death. So ends The Crown. Despite some great performances and many fine moments, however, unlike the reign of the Queen herself, in the end, most people would probably judge the series to have fallen some way short of genuine greatness.

We three Queens: Staunton, Colman and Foy

TV review: The Crown. Season 6. Episode 4: Aftermath

No time to Di: Ghost Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) haunts the Queen (Imelda Staunton).

Woo-ooh! Watch out everyone! Halloween may have been and gone, but there are two ACTUAL GHOSTS in this episode. Despite being dispatched in the last episode, the spirits of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) and Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) both briefly return to the mortal realm to haunt their relatives. Di visits her grief-stricken ex-husband, Prince Charles (Dominic West) and the Queen (Imelda Staunton) while Dodi pops in on his dad, Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw).

One wonders if the “psychic” who the then still-living Diana reportedly visited in Episode 2 had anything to do with this? Can we expect to see more phantoms in The Crown’s future? Perhaps a return visit from John Lithgow’s Churchill or from the Queen’s father, George VI (Jared Harris)?Perhaps Charles I? Or Henry VIII? I doubt it.

Of course, they’re presumably not really supposed to be ghosts. If they were everyone would have been a little bit more surprised when they first materialised. For example, when the spectral Diana introduces herself mid-flight with a playful “ta-da!”, Charles would presumably have tried to jump off the plane. It is a dramatic device, albeit a thoroughly silly one which doesn’t work at all.

In truth, this is inevitably a very sombre episode. Di and Dodi are dead and The Crown is quite unstinting in showing Charles and Al-Fayed’s unrestrained grief as they learn the shocking news from Paris. Despite having so recently been engaged in a PR war with his ex-wife, Charles (in this, at least) now does an abrupt volte-face and stands up for the rights of Diana and their two children. The Queen and Philip’s (Jonathan Pryce) stubborn determination to keep buggering on as if nothing has changed, seems positively cold-hearted in comparison. The ghostly Diana plays a crucial role in softening up the Queen’s official response to the tragedy.

We also see Al-Fayed in full grief mode, an element that was entirely absent from Peter Morgan’s last journey into this territory when he wrote 2006’s acclaimed film, The Queen. Al-Fayed is not yet the crazed conspiracy theorist he will become. We get to see Imelda Staunton replicating the Queen’s actual TV broadcast from the time, something Helen Mirren did in the 2006 film. It would be interesting to see the three versions: the late Queen’s, Mirren’s and Staunton’s played side by side.

We also get some nonsense about the young Prince William (Rufus Kampa) going missing for fourteen hours following his mother’s death: an untrue story which goes precisely nowhere (“Have you seen William?…oh, there he is”).

It’s hard to imagine Peter Morgan would have got away with portraying Diana and Dodi as ghosts in the 2006 Helen Mirren film. Guess what? He doesn’t really get away with it here either.

Windsor change: The Queen (Imelda Staunton) changes tack.

TV review: The Crown. Season 6. Episode 1: Persona Non Grata

Under pressure: Diana (Elizabeth Debicki)

The Crown is back!

But while always a big event, the arrival of this, the sixth and final series in the royal saga has received a somewhat more muted media reaction than usual. This is partly, no doubt, because of the death of the actual real-life Queen last year. In truth, however, Imelda Staunton’s monarch is no longer the star of the show anyway, at least, in these first four episodes (the final six will be released on December 14th). The focus for now is mostly on the recently divorced Princess Diana and her activities during her final fateful summer of 1997.

We all know where this leading, of course. As if anyone needed reminding, a short prelude depicts the famous Parisian car crash from the perspective of a late night French dogwalker who calls the emergency services after witnessing the limo speeding into the Pont de l’Alma tunnel, swiftly followed by an inevitable, sickening thud.

The next three episodes then go back to show us Diana’s final weeks, notably her blossoming romance with the equally doomed Dodi Fayed (Khalid Abdalla) as they holiday in Saint-Tropez. Not everything is as idyllic as it might first appear, however. For one thing, Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) is already being hounded by the paparazzi. For another, Dodi’s motives for wooing Di seem questionable as he’s been put up to it by his powerful, super-rich father, Mohamed Al-Fayed (Salim Daw). Al-Fayed takes an obsessive, prurient interest in his son’s progress with the Princess. Ultimately, his constant interference completely ruins Dodi’s relationship with his beautiful American fiancée, model, Kelly Fisher (Erin Richards).

Al-Fayed is, incidentally, another figure who has died recently in real-life, aged 94 at the end of August, twenty-six years almost to the day after the accident which killed his son.

Meanwhile, Prince Charles (Dominic West) is in a strop because he can’t get anyone to attend Camilla’s (Olivia Williams) 50th birthday party. While his perpetually sozzled aunt, Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville) is happy to party anywhere, both the Queen and Philip (Jonathan Pryce) basically explain they are staying in to wash their hair that night as neither want to be seen to formally endorse the future king’s relationship with the Prince’s mistress. When the party does happen it is completely overshadowed by newspaper coverage of his ex-wife’s holiday antics.

It’s all a bit sad really and a bit of a shame that in a series which is dedicated to covering the Queen’s seventy-year reign in 54 episodes, we get at least five episodes devoted to the year 1997 alone. Diana’s death was undeniably a major event, but it was entirely an accident which could easily have been averted had events transpired differently on the night itself. Her romance with Dodi was also very brief and may well have ended before too long, had the couple survived.

With these points in mind, one wonders if it was really necessary to cover the details of Diana and Dodi’s final days in such detail?

Doomed romance: Dodi (Khalid Abdalla) and Diana (Elizabeth Debicki)

Book review: Code of Conduct, by Chris Bryant

British politics is in trouble. Lots of our MPs are (contrary to legend) hard-working and decent. But some are not. As an MP himself, Chris Bryant has witnessed many of the negative elements of British parliamentary life first-hand . He was there, for example, on the shameful day, the Boris Johnson government attempted to allow an unprecedented rule change to allow former minister, Owen Paterson to get away with breaking Commons rules. He has seen (as we all have) the now disgraced Prime Minister Johnson lying and lying and lying again in the Commons and numerous MPs from all parties bending and breaking the rules to protect themselves and achieve personal advantage. Reform is clearly sorely needed. At the very least, the rule that no member should be able to accuse another member of lying within the House of Commons chamber is surely long overdue for change? Chris Bryant knows what he’s talking about and clearly has many great ideas on how to change things for the better. It is surely time we ejected the current ruling band of corrupt, incompetent miscreants from power and elected a Labour government imbued with the very real appetite and energy to implement these long overdue and urgently needed reforms was elected in its place.

Book review: Badgeland, by Steve Rayson

Badgeland: Memoir of a Labour Party Young Socialist in 1980s Britain, by Steve Rayson. Published: 7th February 2023

Steve Rayson has worn a few badges in his time.

The 1980s was a time when badges were often worn to convey political slogans, at least by those on the Left. Slogans like: ‘Coal not Dole’, ‘Nuclear Power, No Thanks’, ‘Rock Against Racism’, ‘Jobs not Bombs’, ‘Tories Out’, ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, ‘Tony Benn for Deputy’, and ‘Keep GLC working for London’.

The book opens in Swindon in the late 1970s, at the exact point that Steve’s teenage preoccupations with football, fishing and females start to give way to a wider interest in promoting the Labour Party and socialism. It is a cause that will dominate the next decade of his life.

Opposition to his newfound idealism can be found everywhere. The old lady on the bus who refuses to accept that his ‘Anti Nazi League’ badge is not somehow intended to promote Nazism. The friend who rubs his hands with glee at the thought of helping his mother buy her own council house under the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme. The short-lived French girlfriend who proclaims, “I really admire Margaret Thatcher.” The man who concludes, ”I wouldn’t trust Labour with my money…Red Ken would just give it all to black lesbians.” Worst of all is the cool indifference of his working-class father who just seems embarrassed by his son’s frequent left-wing outbursts.

Over time, Steve sees his hometown and his country transformed. Indeed, he is transformed himself, never betraying his principles but forced to make compromises as he attempts to find his place in a rapidly changing new Thatcherite world. The book covers similar territory to other political memoirs by people of a similar age such as Mark Steel’s Reasons to be Cheerful or John O’Farrell’s Things Can Only Get Better. Steve Rayson lacks the comedy background of either of these two fairly well-known figures: until now, he has been best known for his more sober analysis of the reasons behind Labour’s 2019 General Election defeat, The Fall of the Red Wall (2020).

But this is, overall, a very readable, engaging and sometimes funny account of one young man’s decade-long campaign to attempt to halt and ideally reverse the nation’s gradual transformation into a new, crueller, harsher new Thatcherite reality.

Order the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1739256603

Book review: The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success and Failure from Butler to Corbyn, by Steve Richards

Steve Richards knows his stuff.

His previous book, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to Johnson focused on the ten most recent British occupants of 10 Downing Street.

In his new book, even the list of subjects chosen is potentially contentious as Richards has specifically chosen to focus on the ten people who he feels came closest to becoming Prime Minister in the last sixty or so years without ever quite achieving it.

The list actually includes eleven people, not ten, as Richards has judged the two Milibands to be equally worthy of a place here and are both dealt with in one chapter.

The figures included are:

Rab Butler, Roy Jenkins, Barbara Castle, Denis Healey, Neil Kinnock, Michael Heseltine,  Michael Portillo, Ken Clarke, David and Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn.

It is a good selection. Of the eleven, only three were ever party leader. Neil Kinnock and Ed Miliband were both cruelly denied power after losing General Elections (in 1992 and 2015) which most opinion polls and most people expected them to emerge from as Prime Minister, as at the very least, the leaders of a Hung Parliament. In 2017, Jeremy Corbyn caused a major upset by wiping out Theresa May’s majority after she called an unnecessary election which she had expected to win by a landslide. For a short period, Corbyn seemed achingly close to power. But his last two years as Opposition leader were disastrous and in 2019, he lost far more heavily to the Tories, by then under their new leader, Boris Johnson.

Two others on the list, Rab Butler and Michael Heseltine came close to becoming leader while their parties were in power.  But while supremely well-qualified for the position of PM on paper, Butler lacked the qualities necessary to secure the position in practice. He lost out three times in 1955, 1957 and 1963. He was ultimately outmanoeuvred by the far more ruthless Harold Macmillan. Amongst other things, his speech to the 1963 Party Conference was much too dull to excite the Tory Faithful.

Michael Heseltine’s party conference speeches, in contrast, were never dull but he faced a near impossible challenge in 1990 in attempting to both remove Margaret Thatcher from office and replace her. He succeeded in the first but failed to achieve the latter despite remaining a potential leadership contender until after the Tories lost power in 1997. Although he wisely avoids going down the counter-factual history route, Richards does speculate that as Prime Minister, Heseltine may well have fundamentally changed Britain forever. Alas, we will never know.

Ultimately, all eleven of the figures featured here failed to win the premiership for different reasons. Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey and Ken Clarke all attempted to swim against the opposing tides then prevailing within their own parties. Onetime heir to the Thatcherite legacy, Michael Portillo, meanwhile, was forced into such a fundamental rethink of his values by his 1997 defeat, that he seemed to have lost all his enthusiasm for leadership by the time he was finally able to contest it in 2001. Many of his original supporters by then had their doubts as to whether they still wanted him to be leader too.

Richards’ list is almost as interesting for those it misses off as for those it includes. From the outset, his position is clear: in this book, he is only interested in the reasons why people didn’t become PM. He thus wastes no time on the tragic cases of Hugh Gaitskell, Iain Macleod or John Smith, all of whom lost any chance they might have had simply as a result of their sadly premature deaths. He also wastes no time on no-hopers. Whatever qualities they might have had, nobody ever expected Michael Foot or William Hague to make the jump from Opposition leader to Downing Street, least of all the men themselves.

I am surprised by Reginald Maudling’s exclusion from the list, however. Whatever his flaws, he was widely expected to beat Edward Heath to the Tory leadership in 1965 and from there may well have led the Tories back into power as Heath himself somehow managed to do. Richards also (perhaps after some hesitation) rejects Tony Benn from the list arguing:

“Benn almost qualifies as a prime minister we never had but fails to do so because, unlike Corbyn, he was never leader of the Opposition and he never had a credible chance of becoming prime minister while Labour was in government.”

This is fair enough but it does make Barbara Castle’s inclusion as one of the ten seem a bit conspicuous. She never after all, even stood for party leader. Yet it arguably doesn’t matter. Castle was a colourful and interesting character. She might have become leader and her inclusion proves a useful entry point for discussing other female politicians of the time such as Shirley Williams and Margaret Thatcher. Richards’ writing is consistently engaging and well-argued. And interested readers should rest assured, the likes of Tony Benn and Michael Foot certainly get lots of coverage here anyway.

It is a sad book, in some ways. Neil Kinnock possessed many brilliant qualities and achieved much but his nine years as Opposition leader were generally agonising. He arguably saved the Labour Party only to find that he himself had become their biggest obstacle to it ever winning power. Both Milibands were hugely talented too but ultimately found their own ambitions effectively cancelled each other out with disastrous consequences for both them and their family. Jeremy Corbyn, a man who Richards reliably assures us is almost completely lacking in any personal vanity at all ended up finding himself widely labelled as narcissistic.

It is an excellent book nevertheless confirming Steve Richards’ position as one of our finest political writers. Perhaps Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer should grab a copy and take note if only to help ensure they don’t find themselves in any future editions?

Published by: Atlantic Books.

Book review: Watching Neighbours Twice A Day, by Josh Widdicombe

Josh Widdicombe must be one of the busiest comedians working in Britain today. In the week before I wrote this review, I spotted him on Who Do You Think You Are?, the newly-revived Blankety Blank and, as always, appeared alongside Adam Hills and Alex Brooker on Channel 4’s Friday night hit, The Last Leg. And that’s without me even checking properly: goodness knows how many times he’s cropped up on Dave in that time, perhaps on a repeat of his own panel show, Hypothetical or on an old episode of Taskmaster.

This book isn’t a full-blown autobiography, however. It is the story of Josh’s youth growing up in Dartmoor as told through the TV he watched, specifically during the decade of the 1990s. As someone who watched a lot of TV myself during this period (and who still does), this format is very appealing to me. Many of the shows Josh watched were the ones I watched too. Josh can at least justify his childhood TV addiction on the grounds that he grew up in a remote sparsely populated area of Devon. I, however, grew up in Peterborough: not exactly a hub of culture but a busy enough, populous (new) town. What was my excuse?

Anyway, Josh begins by discussing Gus Honeybun. Gus was a regional ITV children’s puppet famous to anyone growing up in the south-west of England at almost any point during the last four decades of the 20th century but wholly unfamiliar to me and the vast silent majority of the world who grew up anywhere else or at any other time. The only reason I’d ever heard of Gus before at all, is because I moved to Devon in my twenties in the 2000s (presumably the exact opposite of what Josh himself did) and have had people talk to me about this great, mythical, winking TV birthday bunny since.

Any young viewers who, like myself, grew up in the area covered by the Anglia ITV franchise during the Eighties were lumbered with a frenzied waving TV puppet called ‘B.C.’ during this period. ‘B.C.’ stood for ‘Birthday Club’ which was also not entirely accidentally, the name of the short segments of TV, ‘B.C.’ himself appeared on, often with Norwich-based presenter, Helen McDermott. Unlike Gus Honeybun whose identity was entirely unambiguous, I am genuinely unsure what animal ‘B.C.’ was supposed to be. Some sort of wildcat? Perhaps a leopard? Maybe even a giraffe? He really doesn’t look anything like either of these. Occasionally, ‘B.C.’ would be absent because “he’s on his holidays today” (translation: he’s in the washing machine). At any rate, as with the solar eclipse of August 1999, I suspect the south-west got the best of it here. ‘B.C.’ may as well have stood for “Bored Children.”

Anyway, this is only one of many items on TV discussed here. Others include:

Neighbours: Like Josh, I too, was a huge fan of the Australian soap for a fairly short period. However, I am over six years older than him (he was born in 1983, I was born at the end of 1976) and here it really shows. I’d largely lost interest by the time he got into it. Despite us both remembering Todd Landers being run over, there is little cross-over (he doesn’t mention ‘Plain Jane Super Brain,’ the tragic death of Daphne Clarke or Dr. Clive Gibbons dressing up in a gorilla outfit at all). His discussion of a horrendously racist 1996 storyline in which the character Julie Martin accuses her new Chinese neighbours of killing and barbecuing her missing dog (which I’d never heard about) is grimly fascinating though. As is the ‘Big Break’ chapter which details just some of the horrors of Jim Davidson’s career.

Ghostwatch: Unlike Josh (and many others) I never thought this notorious dramatised ‘live broadcast from a real haunted house’ was actually real. Although as he points out, knowing it isn’t real does nothing to diminish just how terrifying it is to watch even today. Or brilliantly made. Even the bit where Michael Parkinson gets possessed.

The Simpsons and I’m Alan Partridge: These chapters are essentially songs of praise about the brilliance of 1990s TV comedy. I am in full agreement.

GamesMaster: I watched it too. And, happily, Josh’s household was so far behind that his memories of 1990s computer games sit happily with my memories of 1980s ones.

In short, I enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it. I agree wholeheartedly with him about some things: Election ’97 was a joyous and memorable night. The death of Diana was a genuinely tragic and shocking event, but by time of her funeral it had descended into a distasteful grief-fest which much of the population (myself and Josh himself included) felt wholly isolated from.

I disagree with him about other things. The Spice Girls certainly were not “the greatest pop band of all time.” And on points of factual accuracy: nobody ever died of a drug overdose on Grange Hill (Zammo, the school heroin addict never died while Danny Kendall’s death in the series was not drug-related). He talks about the early Eighties Andrew Davies-scripted Schools programme, ‘Badger Girl’ as if it was made in the Nineties. And Tony Blair famously never once sent an email while in Downing Street.

There was too much football talk in the book for me, but for this he cannot be faulted. He was and is a football fan. It would be unreasonable not to expect him to discuss it.

There are chapters on many 1990s TV shows here, amongst them, Gladiators, Knightmare, You Bet!, TFI Friday, 999, The X-Files and Eldorado. There are no chapters on Twin Peaks, Our Friends in the North, Prime Suspect, Inspector Morse, Cracker or Queer as Folk. But so what? There are no chapters on Baywatch, Hollyoaks, The Darling Buds of May, Friends, Byker Grove, South Park or Sweet Valley High either. You cannot write about everything.

Who does he think he is? Josh Widdicombe is a fine comic writer and as Adam Hills would put it, “the pride of Dartmoor.”

Published by: Blink.

Book review: 101 Ways To Win An Election

A politician will be asked many questions during the course of their life. “Are you going to resign, Minister?” and “Did you threaten to overrule him?” are two less friendly examples. But for anyone hoping to launch their own political career, this book asks all the critical questions anyone aspiring to political office will need to answer if they are going to overcome what should be the first major obstacle to achieving power: winning an election. Never mind, “What do I believe in?” or “why do I want to do this?” These are questions you will have to answer for yourself. Mark Pack and Edward Maxfield are seasoned veterans of a number of successful and unsuccessful campaigns. There is no agenda here, other than to educate the reader as to how best to win whatever campaign they are fighting, be it for election to parliament, parish council or to the PTA. It is full of practical advice. Now on it’s third edition, it is first and foremost an essential guidebook on how to get elected. It is not primarily intended as a source of interest for geeky political bystanders like myself. Although it does fulfil that role too, it must be said.

Let us give a few examples from the text. Have you given any thought to whose votes your trying to win? If your answer to this is “everyone’s” then think again. You need to be more targeted than that. The bad news is, you’re not going to win everyone’s votes. The good news is, you don’t have to.

Are you campaigning for continuity or change? Are you trying to win new supporters or consolidate your position with existing ones? And how do you come across to the electorate? Are you, as Steve van Riel has suggested, Darth Vader (ruthless, but effective) or Father Dougal from Father Ted (caring, consensual but ineffective)?

The book tackles everything from broad strokes to the nitty gritty. How do you recruit a loyal campaign team? How should you deal with internet trolls? How do you deal with the media and get your voice heard? How do you drum home a consistent message without sounding robotic or repetitive? How do you attack your opponents without insulting and alienating potential future supporters?

It’s all here in what remains the definitive election campaign handbook of our times.

Book review: 101 Ways To Win An Election (Third Edition), by Mark Pack and Edward Maxfield. Published by: Biteback. Available: now.

Book review: All In It Together, by Alwyn Turner

How soon is too soon to write about the history of a particular time or place?

Following on from his earlier three excellent volumes which took us from the start of the 1970s to the dawn of the new millennium, Alwyn Turner’s new book picks up the English story at the time of New Labour’s second massive General Election victory in 2001 before dropping us off again at the time of David Cameron’s surprise narrow win in 2015. The stage is set for the divisive Brexit battles of the last five years and for the divisive leadership of the Labour Party by Jeremy Corbyn after 2015, but the narrative clearly stops before getting to either. Turner’s book is packed full of reminders of this eventful and turbulent period. Who now remembers Pastygate? Cleggmania? Russell Brand’s dialogue with Ed Miliband or Robert Kilroy Silk’s thwarted battle to take over UKIP? Viewed from the perspective of the current Coronavirus pandemic which, writing in July 2021, has thus far totally dominated the third decade of the 21st century, Turner’s social history of this busy and already seemingly historically quite distant fourteen year period already seems very welcome.

It is not all about politics, of course. As before, Turner takes a good look too at changes in society as viewed through the prism of TV, literature and other developments. No doubt he will one day have much to say about the recent Euro 2020 Finals and subsequent race row. Here, for example, we get a thorough comparison between the different styles of comedians, Jimmy Carr and Roy Chubby Brown. Both are edgy and deliberately tackle sensitive subjects for their humour. Carr, is however, middle-class and Cambridge-educated while Brown never conceals his working-class origins. Carr is frequently on TV, while Brown, although popular, is never allowed on. But, as Turner points out, it is not simply a matter of class. Carr is deliberately careful, firstly never to go too far or to appear as if he is endorsing any (or most) of the dark things he talks about. Brown is much less cautious. He frequently pushes his jokes into genuinely uneasy territory and occasionally seems to be making crowd-pleasing anti-immigration points which totally lack any comedic punchline. Whereas Carr clearly has a carefully constructed stage persona, it is unclear where the stage Chubby Brown begins and the real Chubby Brown ends.

Class comes up a fair bit in the book. Turner identifies a definite resurgence in the popularity of posher folk in public life during this period. Some are obvious: TV chefs such as Nigella Lawson, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, Chris Martin of Coldplay, the rise of Boris Johnson and David Cameron, the last becoming the first Tory leader to come from a public school background in forty years in 2005. Others are less obvious: musician Lily Allen was privately educated as were Gemma Collins and some of her other The Only Way is Essex companions. Even Labour’s Andy Burnham went to Cambridge.

The underrated Russell T. Davies 2003 TV drama, Second Coming in which Christopher Eccleston’s video shop assistant surprisingly claims to be the Son of God and indeed turns out to really be him. The phone hacking scandal. The London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. The rise and fall of George Galloway. The 2011 London riots. The Jimmy Saville affair and other scandals. The TV show, Life on Mars. All these topics are revisited by Turner in intelligent and readable fashion.

Other interesting nuggets of information also come in the footnotes. “By 2009 over 9 per cent of Peterborough had come to the city from overseas.” Alexander Armstrong was the first man to play David Cameron in a TV drama in 2007’s The Trial of Tony Blair (aired during Blair’s final months in office). We also get reminders of some of the better jokes of the period in this manner. Frank Skinner’s “George Osborne has two types of friends: the haves and the have yachts.” Or the late Linda Smith’s take on the 2005 Tory election slogan: “Are you sinking like we’re sinking?”

We are also kept informed of the main biscuit preferences of our political leaders, an issue Gordon Brown, a brilliant man, but always uneasy with popular culture, characteristically messed up answering.

There is less about music, although Turner does at one point suggest that the Spice Girls “might have been the last group that really mattered, that meant something beyond record sales and outside their own constituency.”

Turner does well to retain a position of political neutrality here and is especially good at retracing the early machinations on the Labour Left and the Eurosceptic Right which seemed irrelevant at the start of this era but which by the end of it came to seem very important indeed. It is, indeed, a very depressing period for anyone on the liberal left. In 2001, the Lib Dems under their dynamic young leader, Charles Kennedy seemed poised to become the nation’s second party. By 2015, Kennedy was dead and the party wasn’t even registering in third place in terms of either seats or share of the vote. In 2001, Tony Blair won a second huge landslide majority, seemed to have the world at his feet and was one of the most highly regarded political leaders of recent times. Furthermore, no one serious in political life was even remotely contemplating withdrawing from the European Union.

What changed? Read this endlessly fascinating book to find out.

Book review: All In It Together, England in the Early 21st Century, by Alwyn Turner. Published by: Profile Books. Available: now.

Book review: Where Did I Go Right? by Geoff Norcott

Geoff Norcott is that rarest of breeds: a popular and funny right-wing comedian.

Whereas, even only a few years ago, most people would have struggled to name even one living British comedian with conservative views (particularly when the list is shortened further to exclude those who are not openly racist), Norcott has risen to fame largely on the basis of his appearances as the ‘token right-winger’ on the BBC’s excellent topic comedy show, The Mash Report. Ironically, the show was cancelled earlier this year, largely as a result of concerns by nervous BBC execs that, Norcott’s contribution aside, it was too left-wing.

Some would doubtless challenge me for even agreeing to review this book and thus provide the oxygen of publicity to someone who is not only a self-confessed Tory voter but a Brexiteer.

To these people I would point out first that Norcott clearly represents the more acceptable face of the Right. He is clearly not racist at all and in 2019 was appointed as a member of a BBC Diversity Panel with the aim of ensuring the corporation represents a broad cross section of the public’s views. He is also, it must be mentioned, deeply sceptical about the leadership skills of Boris Johnson. This is a definite point in his favour, even if his scepticism was not quite sufficient to prevent him from helping vote Johnson back into power in the December 2019 General Election.

Secondly, I would argue strongly that we shut out voices such as Norcott’s at our peril. Nobody’s life is perfectly typical of anything, but Norcott seems to be a textbook example of the sort of voter Labour could once, perhaps complacently rely on to support them as recently as the 1990s and 2000s but who they have since lost with fatal consequences. With much of Norcott’s assessment of Labour taking the form of critical advice rather than flagrant attacks, he is certainly worth listening to.

By coincidence, me and Geoff Norcott are almost exactly the same age. He was born six days earlier than me in December 1976. Like me, his first ever experience of voting in a General Election as a twenty-year-old was for New Labour in May 1997. He describes his feeling on leaving the voting booth:

“It was probably the first and last time I ever felt total conviction about the party I voted for,” I feel the same. It was a combination of the perhaps misplaced certainties of youth. But it was also, I think, something about the political mood of 1997.

Like me, he returned, perhaps slightly less enthusiastically to voting Labour in 2001. Thereafter, our paths diverge. I came very close to voting Lib Dem in 2005, largely because of my opposition to the war in Iraq (I eventually held my nose and voted for my local Labour candidate who was anti-war, but lost her seat anyway). Norcott doesn’t mention his views on the war, but did vote Lib Dem, partly because like me, he admired their then leader, the late Charles Kennedy, but also as part of a slow journey he was undergoing towards the Tories. In the last four General Elections held since 2010, he voted Conservative. He also voted Leave in 2016.

In truth, Geoff Norcott, although from a traditionally Labour family had been showing conservative instincts from a young age. He had an entirely different upbringing to me. Mine was comfortable and middle-class, his was marred by both poverty and parental divorce. He is sceptical about the welfare system based on his own family experiences and is less enthusiastic than most people are these days about the NHS. He felt endlessly patronised while at Goldsmith College, London in the mid-1990s and has come away with a lifelong scepticism about left-wing middle-class liberals, many of whom frequently serve as targets for his humour today, (for example, on the marches for a second ‘People’s Vote’ on Brexit: “The idea that loads of liberals having a day out in London with chopped kale power salads and terrible chants in some way spoke for the country was laughable”). He has had some tough battles on Twitter. Critics of his appearances on Question Time have variously attacked him for either being rich and self-interested or too common to be on TV. He now seems to be convinced Twitter is a hotbed of left-wing sentiment. I’m not sure it is.

The book takes us through his difficult early years, a brief stint in media sales, his work as a teacher, his time entertaining the troops overseas, a series of personal tragedies a few years ago through to his final success as a successful and reasonably well-known comedian and now author, settled with his family in Cambridgeshire.

Needless to say, I don’t agree with him on many things. He believes the Blair and Brown governments spent too much: I don’t think they did particularly, and even if they had done, this certainly does not explain why the credit crunch happened. His main criticism of people like the Milibands and Keir Starmer seems to be largely based on the fact that they are middle-class and cannot claim any link to working-class people. In my view, this is true but is surely dwarfed by the facts that their opponents men such as David Cameron and Boris Johnson were born into lives of such immense privilege to the extent that these leaders have no knowledge or interest in reducing poverty at all.

I suspect, at root, like many right-wing people, Norcott thinks there is something hypocritical about anyone with money having a social conscience about anything, while his tolerance for rich leaders who openly don’t give a toss about society is much greater. This has never been my view. My horror at the Tory record on homelessness, unemployment and underfunding of the health service has always been sufficient to drive me away me from ever voting for them, particularly when combined with the frequent right-wing tendency (not shared by Norcott himself) to either be racist or to blame many of the weakest and poorest in the world for many of society’s ills.

Geoff Norcott is, of course, now successful enough to be considered middle-class himself and undoubtedly has many left-wing comics amongst his friendship circle. None of which should detract from this sometimes funny, enjoyable and often useful book which is packed with useful phrases such as ,”when you demonise a voter, you lose them forever” which many of us would do well to remember.

Book review: Where Did I Go Right?: How The Left Lost Me, by Geoff Norcott. Published by: Octopus. Available: now.

Book review: The Sultan of Swing – The Life of David Butler

Okay: admittedly ‘The Sultan of Swing’ may sound like a rather flash title for a biography of the 20th century’s foremost election statistician: ‘Sultans of Swing’ was the name of a Dire Straits album. But David Butler was a seemingly permanent feature of the BBC’s TV election coverage for nearly thirty years. He not only largely created the science of Psephology (the study of balloting and calculating election results) almost from scratch but perhaps did more than anyone else to make the complex world of electoral science accessible and easily understandable to the general public. Although he has always been too modest to admit it, he effectively invented the familiar General Election night device of the Swingometer. He is now ninety-six years old. The long story of his life is worth telling and the veteran writer, journalist and broadcaster, Michael Crick does so very well in this biography, published in 2018.

It is quite eye-opening (at least, it was for me) to learn just how primitive election coverage was when Butler started out in the 1940s. Although BBC TV was established in 1936, the organisation remained extremely wary of providing decent coverage of elections or indeed any aspect of British political life for the first twenty years of its existence. Fearful that the government might accuse them of political bias and use this to restrict their powers (admittedly, a very real risk today), the broadcaster imposed strict rules on itself. The monumental 1945 General Election night was thus covered on BBC radio only: admittedly, perhaps not such a huge issue as very few people owned TVs then anyway. In 1950 again, the BBC did not allow itself to cover any election canvassing during the campaign itself. It did, however, tentatively allow a programme covering the results for the first time in which the handsome young dark-haired and very self-assured Oxford graduate, Butler made a favourable impression. He would become a fixture of the BBC’s election night coverage during the next nine General Elections held up to 1979, often appearing as part of a sort of double-act with friendly rival, the Canadian, Bob McKenzie. Butler would adopt spectacles and see his hair grow grey in the ensuing thirty years but his contribution would prove no less vital.

The book opens with a scene in 1950, in which Winston Churchill, at that point Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition and plotting his own return to Downing Street summoned the young Butler to discuss the possibilities the new science of opinion polling offered for predicting election outcomes in advance. It is a good start: the political titan nearing the end of his long career meeting the young talent at the start of his own. In general, though he seems to have been slightly left of centre politically, Butler strived to remain impartial, something which generated occasional tensions with his lifelong friend, left-wing Labour MP, Tony Benn who he met at university. Butler, in fact, had a very distinguished family background and was the cousin of the leading Tory politician, R.A. ‘Rab’ Butler.

Michael Crick chronicles the details of Butler’s many books, innovations, his travels in America and his success in exporting many of his techniques to Australia and India alongside his personal life. This includes two very sad elements: the death of his wife, the very successful academic, Lady Marilyn Butler in 2011 after many years of happy marriage in 2011 following a struggle with Alzheimer’s disease and the death of one of their three sons, Gareth following a sudden heart attack in 2008, aged just 42.

But, in general, this is a well-researched and highly readable biography of a life well-lived.

Book review: This Land, by Owen Jones

Five and a half years ago, Jeremy Corbyn achieved the seemingly impossible. An amiable left-wing backbencher of some thirty years standing, his victory in the contest to succeed Ed Miliband was one of the most astounding political occurrences of the past fifty years. Yet four years later, his leadership ended in bitter defeat.

This insider’s account from the talented left-wing writer Owen Jones, one of the first people to champion Corbyn’s campaign in 2015, tells the story of this failure. We will all have our own views of Jeremy Corbyn. However, this is a review of Owen Jones’ book not of Corbyn himself. And Jones is frank about Corbyn’s failings. He could be stubborn and badly organised. He totally mishandled the Brexit issue and the antisemitism row, two issues which totally derailed his leadership.

On the other hand, Jones does not mince words on how Corbyn was betrayed by those within his own party and how less surprisingly he was brutally misrepresented and maligned by Britain’s conservative media. Owen Jones’ book is a thoughtful, well-written, balanced, intelligent and accessible account of a revolution which failed.

This Land: The Story of a Movement, by Owen Jones. Published by Allen Lane (2020)

Book review: James Callaghan – An Underrated Prime Minister?

James Callaghan is a prime minister who tends to be overlooked by history.

The new series of The Crown doesn’t even mention him at all. skipping straight from Jason Watkins’ Harold Wilson to Gillian Anderson’s Margaret Thatcher. Peter Morgan’s earlier play, The Audience, which inspired The Crown made a joke of how easy it was to forget him, featuring a scene in which both Helen Mirren’s elderly Queen and her youngest prime minister, David Cameron both repeatedly missed him out when attempting to remember everyone who had been in Downing Street during her long reign.

Callaghan, an ardent royalist and prime minister for three years between 1976 and 1979, would have been sad to see himself remembered like this. Or rather, not remembered.

It’s not just Peter Morgan though. I myself was born under Callaghan’s premiership but understandably have no memory of it: I was not yet two-and-a-half when he left office. But as a teenager, I’d notice blank looks whenever I brought up Callaghan during political discussions with my school friends. The same people had all heard of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. But quite a few had never heard of Callaghan at all.

There are quite a few interesting facts about Callaghan. He was one of only eight British prime ministers not to go to university (a list which includes Disraeli, Lloyd George and Churchill). He was married longer than any other prime minister, his wife Audrey, who he married in 1939, died in March 2005. Callaghan himself, died just 11 days later, one day before his 93rd birthday. He was also the longest-lived prime minister ever, surpassing Harold Macmillan’s record, by just 39 days.

‘Sunny Jim’ was also the only person to have held all of the great offices of state. He was Chancellor (1964-67), Home Secretary (1967-70), Foreign Secretary (1974-76) and Prime Minister (1976-79). Some people hold just one of these positions (e.g. Wilson, Heath, Thatcher, Blair, Cameron – all just PM), some two (Eden – Foreign Sec and PM, Brown – Chancellor and PM, Jack Straw – Foreign Sec and Home Sec, May – Home Sec and PM, Johnson – Foreign Sec and PM) and others three (Churchill – all except Foreign Sec, Rab Butler – all except PM, Macmillan – all except Home Sec, Major – all except Home Sec). But only Callaghan has held all four.

This book of essays is about Callaghan’s record as Prime Minister. Generally, his tenure tends not to be remembered fondly, largely because it ended badly. In late 1978, with Labour ahead in the polls, he held back from calling a General Election. His caution was actually quite understandable in the circumstances, but his decision was to prove disastrous. The next few months would witness a total breakdown in relations between the unions and the government culminating in the catastrophic ‘Winter of Discontent.’ From that point on, a Conservative election win for Margaret Thatcher was inevitable. Callaghan’s image was further harmed by TV images of him appearing complacent and out of touch when interviewed during the strikes after returning with a tan after attending a summit in the Caribbean. The appearance inspired the famous Sun headline, ‘Crisis? What crisis?’ Callaghan never used those exact words but they certainly conveyed the essence of his reaction (he did say, “I don’t accept that there is mounting chaos”). In the end, the government fell as a result of a government defeat in the Commons, not due to an election called at a time of Callaghan’s own choosing. Mrs Thatcher and the Tories won with a majority of more than forty. Memories of the Winter of Discontent would poison Labour’s electoral prospects throughout their eighteen subsequent years in opposition.

Against some pretty stiff competition, Callaghan’s election postponement must rank high on any list of the greatest missed political opportunities of all time.

Putting these disasters to one side, however (if that’s possible), Callaghan’s premiership was up until late 1978, pretty successful. He inherited a dire economic situation from Harold Wilson and was thrown into the IMF Crisis of 1976 almost immediately afterwards. But he and his Chancellor, Denis Healey thereafter handled the economy pretty well. The economy was recovering and unemployment was falling when Labour left office.

In an incredibly fractious situation, he also did very well to manage rising tensions within his own party and cabinet. Despite clashes between Right and Left and the sometimes mischievous activities of Tony Benn, there were, almost uniquely, no major cabinet resignations during his premiership.

Finally, Callaghan was consistently popular and always preferred by most to his sometimes shrill younger opponent, Margaret Thatcher. It is little wonder he came so close to re-election in the autumn of 1978.

Jameps Callaghan – An Underrated Prime Minister? Edited by: Kevin Hickson and Jasper Miles. Published by: Biteback.

TV review: Spooks Series 1 (2002)

Spooks first appeared amidst a blaze of publicity on BBC One in April 2002. Promoted with the catchy slogan, “It’s M-I5, not 9 to 5,” the show was an instant success and with it’s exciting, edgy story-lines and watchable performances, it’s not hard to see why. Eighteen years on, it’s three original stars, Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes and David Oyelowo are all still a regular presence on our screens . Macfadyen, who married his co-star Keeley Hawes in 2004, was indeed, briefly seen as the favourite to succeed Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, before Daniel Craig got the part instead.

Spooks sheds new light on the world of international espionage. In the US, where the word ‘Spooks’ is sometimes used as a racial insult, the show was simply called ‘M-I5.’ Although nobody ever actually says, “it’s M-15, not 9 to 5″ in the show, this phrase aptly sums up the central dilemma experienced by Tom Quinn (Macfadyen) as he tries to juggle his demanding but secret career with his developing relationship with single mother Ellie (Esther Hall) and her young daughter. Quinn is initially known to the family as ‘Matthew,” the actor’s actual first name.

Broadcast only a few months after the 2001 September 11th attacks, these first six episodes appeared at a time of heightened tension, with story-lines including a bomb attack in Britain by a Far Right US anti-abortion group, a siege at the Turkish consulate by Kurdish rebels, some shenanigans involving the late Tim Pigott-Smith as a Jonathan Aitken-like disgraced minister and Anthony Head playing a veteran M- I5 agent who goes rogue while attempting to infiltrate a campaign group planning to disrupt a visit to Britain by unpopular US President George W. Bush.

Veteran actress Jenny Agutter (now also known for Call The Midwife) also appears as does Hugh Laurie in a role which bridges the gap between the 1990s Jeeves and Wooster comedy roles he was then best known for and the more serious parts in House MD and The Night Manager which lay ahead of him. Future celebrity chef Lisa Faulkner also makes a flash in the pan appearance as agent Helen Flynn.

Much of the technology in the early days of Spooks now seems almost laughably dated with the characters relying heavily on CD-ROM discs, old-fashioned looking mobile phones and very slow downloads in a number of scenes. Macfadyen recently starred in Quiz, a dramatisation of the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire cheating scandal and ironically the title sequence and music to Spooks, while presumably seen as flashy and hi-tech at the time, now feel very much like that of a daytime quiz show.

That is not to say Spooks – Series One is only now entertaining for its unintentional comedy value. Far from it. With this and all nine subsequent series now available on the BBC iPlayer (the show ended in 2011, later spawning a moderately successful film version Spooks: The Greater Good in 2015), this is the perfect opportunity to enjoy or enjoy again the opening episodes of a long-running British spy series which essentially got off to an excellent start.

Begin your own surveillance campaign immediately.

Book review: Where Power Stops, by David Runciman

Book review: Where Power Stops: The Making and Unmaking of Presidents and Prime Ministers, by David Runciman. Published by: Profile Books.

The premise is simple enough. David Runciman takes a look at some of the most interesting recent British and American leaders and sees what we can learn from their experiences of leadership. His choice of subjects is in itself fascinating.

Lyndon B. Johnson: a huge, cajoling, powerful figure, the choice of LBJ nevertheless seems slightly odd, simply because his tenure (1963-69) was so much earlier than everyone else included here. Runciman also inevitably relies on Robert Caro’s masterful biography of the 36th US president. Still unfinished, Caro’s magnum opus has barely touched on Johnson’s years in the White House yet. Let’s hope he gets to finish it.

Runciman has a talent for shedding new light on potentially over-familiar topics. All manner of leader is included here. Amongst others, the list includes: exceptional men who fell slightly short of the high hopes they raised on the campaign trail (Barack Obama), good leaders who trashed their own reputations on leaving office (Tony Blair), the highly intelligent and flawed (Bill Clinton and Gordon Brown), the decent but narrow (Theresa May) and the ultimate narcissist, the abominable showman (Donald Trump). The last of these should never have got close to power in the first place. Unhappily, he is the only one included here who is still there.

The fascinating story of the implosion of John Edwards’ 2008 presidential campaign will doubtless make a great film one day. As he never made it to the presidency, however, it doesn’t really belong here. But, overall, Runciman does an excellent job. The book is manna for political geeks like myself.