There is a charming Edwardian photo on the wrap-around cover of Alwyn Turner’s latest book. The picture was apparently taken at the St Giles Street Fair in Oxford around the time the period covered in this book came to an end, i.e. around 1910, the year in which King Edward VII died. It is essentially a busy crowd scene. The rear of the shot is filled with dozens of heads disappearing into the distance but the people in the foreground are clearly visible. Some are clearly aware of the camera and are smiling or looking self-consciously at it. A few of them would be clearly identifiable to anyone who knew them well. It’s unlikely of course, but if you knew anyone living in Oxford at the time, you might spot someone you recognise. The parents, grandparents or great-grandparents of anyone reading this might well be standing there.
Virtually everyone in the picture is wearing a hat of some sort. Most of the males are wearing cloth caps, although a few are wearing boaters or the odd bowler. Although there are one or two hatless boys visible, there are no women without hats at all. To me, the picture evokes memories of films set in the era such as Mary Poppins or The Railway Children. Both those films were made in the Sixties, when the Edwardian era was as much within living memory as the Sixties are to us today. Given that the oldest person living in Britain at the time of writing was born in 1909, we can be certain that everyone in the picture is now dead, in most cases probably for a long time. Some will have died in the world wars, some in the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Some will have lived to witness Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon on TV in 1969. None would have expected to be on the cover of a book, published in the year 2024.
This book is their story. Not their story specifically, but the story of the people of the Edwardian era (1901-10), which can be extended up to 1914. Author Alwyn Turner has most covered the more recent decades in his latest books but here he explores a period tantalisingly beyond the reach of living memory. He focuses heavily on many of the more colourful figures of the time such as the murderer Dt. Crippen (pictured above) and the Liberal MP and fraudster, Horatio Bottomley, who inspired Kenneth Grahame to create the character of Mr Toad. We learn that Edward VII owned a golf bag made entirely from the skin of an elephant’s penis. Filled with lots of surprising nuggets of trivia about the details of Edwardian life, this is never less than an enjoyable and entertaining read.
Book review: Little Englanders: Britain in the Edwardian Era., by Alwyn Turner. Published by: Profile Books
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.
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?
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.
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.
The possibility of a second Donald Trump presidency undoubtedly fills many people with horror. But if he did manage to win the 2024 US presidential election, he would have accomplished a feat achieved by only one person before. Up until now, Grover Cleveland is the only man to have won a full term as president, before leaving the White House only to return to be elected to serve another full term, four years later. Cleveland (1885-89, 1893-97) is thus counted as both the 22nd and 24th US president.
Cleveland’s record is impressive. Aside from Franklin D. Roosevelt, he is the only person to win the popular vote in three US presidential elections. Having won the presidency in 1884, the Democrat, Cleveland was defeated in his bid for re-election by Republican, Benjamin Harrison in 1888. Harrison, a dull, uninspiring figure triumphed in the electoral college despite losing in the popular vote to Cleveland. Cleveland returned to defeat Harrison in 1892, enabling him to embark on a wholly unprecedented non-consecutive second term.
Trump is a very different character from Cleveland, however. For one thing, Cleveland was still only 47 in 1885, making him the youngest ever new president at that point. He was still just shy of sixty when his second term ended twelve years later. Trump, in contrast, would be, at eighty-two, the oldest US president there has ever been, were he to complete a second term in the White House.
Trump’s electoral record has thus far been much less impressive than Cleveland’s. Trump lost the popular vote in both the 2016 election, despite winning in the crucial electoral college and in the 2020 contest with Biden which he lost overall.
For most presidents, leaving the White House marks the end of the road. Since the 1950s, two term presidents like Reagan, Bill Clinton, the second President Bush and Obama have been constitutionally unable to stand for a third term even if they wanted to. Meanwhile, those like Jimmy Carter or George HW Bush who left office after one term, the experience of electoral defeat in a November general election proved so devastating that they usually never sought the presidency again.
There have been exceptions, however. Although he wasn’t actually defeated in the 1908 election, the popular Republican President Theodore Roosevelt resisted widespread pressure to run again in that contest, having previously won handsomely in 1904. It was a decision he soon came to bitterly regret and by 1912, the former President, still only in his early fifties, was campaigning to get his old job back from the outside. But there was a complication: his own party was intent on renominating his successor, President William Taft in 1912. T.R. thus formed his own party and ran as a Progressive “Bull Moose” candidate. However, by choosing to run against the incumbent, he only really succeeded in splitting the Republican vote, pushing Taft into third place and ensuring the victory of Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who probably not have won otherwise.
Ex-President Herbert Hoover also considered another run for the presidency following his defeat by Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. This is, in some ways, surprising. Hoover had become very unpopular following the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Hs name had become so strongly associated with the Great Depression that many of the shanty towns which sprung up in its wake became known as “Hoovervilles.” Little wonder, Hoover’s dreams of a political comeback got nowhere.
In Britain, prime ministerial returns to office have proven less unusual. This is largely because a party leader does not automatically lose his or her position, simply because they have lost a General Election and can thus theoretically live on to win back power another day. William Gladstone served as PM four times between 1868 and 1894 while Stanley Baldwin had three separate stints in Downing Street between 1923 and 1937. This has become less common in recent times, however. While it’s true both Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson both came back for a second spell in power, generally most PMs can assume that like Edward Heath, James Callaghan, John Major or Gordon Brown, that if they lead their party to defeat in a General Election, their time is up.
Who was the most powerful British woman in 20th century British politics?
This should be an easy one. As the first and only female Prime Minister during those years, Margaret Thatcher is really the only possible answer. An unusually influential leader by any measure, love her or hate her, ‘the Iron Lady’ undoubtedly wielded and exercised considerable power during her eleven years in Downing Street.
But who would be come second on that century’s female British power list? The late Queen Elizabeth II reigned throughout most of the second half of the century. But as a constitutional monarch, how much power did she really have? Queen Victoria may have been more powerful in her heyday. But she died in January 1901.
A case could perhaps be made for pioneering women cabinet ministers such as Barbara Castle, Shirley Williams or Mo Mowlam (while it is true Labour has not yet produced a woman prime minister, they have always had a much stronger reputation for creating strong, decent woman cabinet ministers than the Tories have had). But really the argument presented by Linda McDougall in this new biography is overwhelming. Neither elected or royal, Marcia Williams, later known as Baroness Falkender practically ran Britain jointly with Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson between 1964 and 1970 and again between 1974 and 1976. She was Wilson’s personal secretary, then his political secretary, then the head of his political office. She was undoubtedly the most powerful woman in politics during the Wilson era.
The book is very welcome as until now Marcia Williams has had a rather odd political reputation. For one thing, although she only died in 2019, at the age of eighty-six, she remains largely unknown to most people under fifty. I myself, who was born in the same year she and Wilson left Downing Street (1976) knew little of her growing up and despite always being interested in politics, have no clear memories of ever seeing any footage of her speaking on TV.
Those who did know her have often sought to cast her in a negative light. Unsurprisingly, the familiar forces of sexism and snobbery have played a big part in forging public perceptions of her, something this book fights hard to redress. Some have argued she exerted undue influence on Wilson. It is now no longer really disputed that she was very influential, although the extent to which it was “undue” now seems more questionable. It has also suggested she was a malevolent presence who prevented Wilson from reaching his full potential. Neither of these charges stand up to scrutiny. Nor does the claim made by some that she was merely a stupid, jumped-up typist. She was clearly very intelligent.
She first met Wilson in 1956 around the time of the Khruschev’s visit to Britain. The visit included a disastrous dinner held between Soviet leader and various senior Labour Party figures including George Brown which soon descended into a row. Marcia was then in her early twenties, a bright young university graduate and secretary who was convinced Wilson, then forty and frustrated in opposition represented the future of the party. McDougall is in no doubt at all that the two had a sexual relationship with Wilson at this time. She is also certain this ended early. During the next twenty years, they would form a formidable political partnership which saw Wilson lead Labour to four General Election victories.
Her life was not free of scandal. After the failure of her marriage, she had an affair with the married political editor of the Daily Mail, Walter Terry. Two sons resulted from this affair although Terry later returned to his wife. Marcia fought hard to keep both her pregnancies and the existence of the children out of the public eye. This was easier in those days when the press was far less intrusive than it is today. On the downside, illegitimacy was considered far more scandalous than it is today, when more than half of children are born out of wedlock and even the term “out of wedlock” sounds very old-fashioned. There was always an underlying concern that people might wrongly assume her sons were Wilson’s.
She will always be associated with the “Lavender List” controversy which marred the end of Wilson’s premiership. Her later career was also blighted by her addiction to purple hearts and tranquilisers, a very common problem at the time. Her career really ended too early: she was only forty-four when Wilson left office in 1976. Her later years were undermined by ill-health.
Linda McDougall has produced a fine biography here which sheds valuable light on an important and neglected figure of post-war British political history.
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.
Half a century after the Watergate scandal which precipitated his downfall and nearly thirty years after his death, the 37th president retains a strong hold on the popular imagination. Ultimately, most people would probably agree that while he undoubtedly had many good qualities, he was also deeply flawed. The same may unfortunately be said of this new biography of the man.
It’s a shame really that author, Paul Carter didn’t end this volume with Nixon’s first election to congress in 1946. For the chapters on Nixon’s early life, growing up poor in California are easily the best in the book. Although I admit I am something of a Nixon geek, I must admit there was much here I didn’t know. I didn’t know that there had been a small earthquake in the Nixon’s town on the day after one of his young brothers died. I also hadn’t really appreciated how much stage acting the young Nixon did. It’s fascinating stuff (to me, anyway).
“Just as Wicked redefined The Wizard of Oz, Richard Nixon: California’s Native Son boldly challenges common conceptions,” Carter argues, early on. “It is not political. It is nothing more than a straightforward biography that reveals an incredible life.” But this is a problem. Why shouldn’t the book be political? It is, after all, the life story of a politician.
It’s not true anyway. The book definitely is political. Although it rather skips over the most important phase of his life, the presidency (dealt with in just 24 of the book’s 292 pages), the previous 150 or so pages cover his earlier political career: his run for congress, the Hiss case, the notorious Pink Lady senate campaign, the Checkers speech, the vice presidency, his 1960 presidential campaign and defeat, his 1962 run for Governor of California and defeat – in impressive detail.
But the real problem with the book is that it deliberately avoids mentioning anything that will make it’s subject sound bad. This is unfortunate as these failings are some of the most interesting things about him. It’s even more unfortunate as it means, that apart from the first few chapters, this isn’t a hell of a lot of use as a history book. It presents a largely false impression of the man whose life it is describing.
“Nixon was not flawed, humorless, insecure or evil,” Carter writes. I would agree that he was not evil, although even then, some might argue his invading Cambodia might put him in that category. But flawed? Well, yes. It is no accident that he is the only one of the USA’s presidents thus far to have resigned. Insecure? Again, yes. He secretly bugged his own White House and authorised an illegal campaign of dirty tricks against his opponents, in an election he was sure to win anyway. And now you mention it: no, I can’t remember him ever saying anything particularly funny. Aside from “sock it to me” on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. And, I suspect, he didn’t come up with that line himself.
The book thus glosses over the fact that Nixon’s persistent ‘Pink Lady’ insinuation during his 1950 senate campaign was completely groundless. His opponent, actress Helen Gahagan Douglas was a New Deal Democrat. Despite Nixon’s notorious misogynistic claim (omitted in the book) that she was “pink right down to her underwear,” she was no more a Communist sympathiser than he was.
The 1960 presidential campaign is also presented misleadingly, Nixon’s decision to visit all fifty states is treated as if it was some sort of triumph. In reality, it was a rash promise which threw his entire campaign off course in an attempt to fulfil it. Nixon was also damaged by President Eisenhower’s response to a reporter’s question about useful ideas which Nixon contributed to the administration during his eight years as vice president. “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember,” Ike said. Again, this isn’t mentioned in the book. Much is made of Nixon’s apparent integrity in choosing not to contest the election over alleged voting irregularities in Chicago. But, in truth, with Kennedy leading Nixon by a margin of 83 electoral college votes, Nixon challenging the result was never a realistic prospect anyway.
As mentioned, the details of the 1968 campaign and Nixon presidency, both skipped over, neither the best nor the worse aspects are discussed. Watergate is summarised thus: “Nixon attempted to cover-up any White House involvement in order to protect those closest to him.” A more accurate account would point out Nixon subjected the entire nation to an unnecessary trauma in a bid to save his own skin.
We all remember the quote, “there will be no whitewash at the White House.” It is the most famous thing Richard Nixon ever said. We remember it because it was so comprehensively proven to be a lie. There was a whitewash at the White House: Nixon made sure there was a cover-up. But you won’t find this quote anywhere in this book which itself attempts to whitewash the truth about Nixon and who he really was.
Book review: Richard Nixon: California’s Native Son, by Paul Carter. Published by: Potamic Books.
On August 2nd 1923, the President Warren Harding listened while his wife, Florence read him to him from a newspaper. Harding was recuperating after a period of illness and was sitting up in bed, but he liked what he heard. “That’s good! Go on – read some more!” Florence resumed reading. But within moments, Harding had collapsed into the bed, as he struggled with the effects of what was either a heart attack or a stroke. He died shortly afterwards. His First Lady, Florence herself would die, a little over a year later.
Harding had been the 29th US president and was now the fifth to die in office. Two more – FDR and JFK – have died in the century since. He was 57 wen he passed on, but to modern eyes looks much older. Photographs of him today suggest a man of about seventy. In reality, the president had been in a state of poor health for some time, but the true extent of his illness had been concealed from the general public. Most Americans were shocked and saddened to hear of his death. Nine million people lined the railroad tracks as the train carrying his body proceeded from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. He was still a popular figure in 1923.
This would change. Over time, more and more would be revealed about the incompetence and corruption of his administration culminating in what became known as the Teapot Dome scandal. History now judges Harding to have been amongst the very worst of the 45 leaders who have thus far occupied the US presidency.
Back in November 1920, it had seemed like a different story. The Republican Harding had won a landslide in that year’s presidential election by promising a “return to normalcy.” Harding’s grasp of English was questionable (‘normality’ would have been a better word to use) but the concept was hugely appealing to an America still reeling from the traumas of the influenza pandemic and the First World War. Harding had only been selected as the Republican nominee in a “smoke-filled room” as a compromise after a deadlocked Republican convention could not decide on anyone else.
Everyone agreed: Warren Gamalie Harding looked and sounded exactly how a president ought to look and sound. On one occasion, his words even oddly foreshadowed those of a later, much better leader who would be elected forty years later: “We need citizens who are less concerned about what their government can do for them, and more concerned about what they can do for the nation.” Harding easily saw off his Democratic opponent, James M. Cox and his youthful running mate, Franklin D. Roosevelt in the November elections.
In office, however, Harding completely floundered. “I knew that this job would be too much for me,” he admitted, one of many occasions when Harding was effectively condemned by his own words. There were rumours of late-night White House poker games and of extramarital affairs with a mistress at one point having sex with Harding in a wardrobe. That same woman, one Nan Britton claimed her daughter Elizabeth was in fact the result of her affair with Harding, a man more than thirty years her junior. The Hardings always denied this claiming Warren (who had no other children) had been left infertile after a childhood bout of mumps. In fact, a DNA test published in 2015, just ten years after Louise’s death, confirmed beyond reasonable doubt, that she had been President Harding’s daughter.
“I have no trouble with my enemies,” Harding once fumed. “I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!” Harding’s judgement was terrible, for example, appointing Albert B. Fall as Secretary of the Interior. His main qualification for the position? He was Harding’s friend. Some years later, he was convicted of bribery and became the first cabinet minister in US history to be jailed for his conduct while in office. Harding’s attorney general, Harry M. Daugherty also became notorious for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal.
Most of these scandals broke during the presidency of Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge. Perhaps we should let Harding himself have the final word: “I am not fit for this office and never should have been here.”
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.
First, a quick word of warning: one of the main characters in this novel is referred to only as “the Big Guy” throughout. This frankly takes quite a bit of getting used to, but somehow it is possible. And it’s well worth doing so, for if you can, at the end of the day, this is another fine novel from one of the best American authors around. It’s November 2008 and Barack Obama has just soundly beaten Senator John McCain in the race to the White House. The Big Guy (you see? I know!) is very unhappy about this. He is a rich, ageing conservative and soon begins consulting some of his friends who have similar inclinations as to the best possible response to these events. But what exactly do they intend to do? As others have noticed, this is definitely quite a political book. Homes’ last novel, May We Be Forgiven featured a character who was obsessed with Richard Nixon a lot and this one includes cameo appearances from the defeated McCain as well as from presidents Bush (the second one) and Obama. I enjoyed the political side of the book, but rest assured, there’s lots of other good stuff here too as the Big Guy finds time to reassess his relationships with Charlotte, his troubled, alcoholic wife and with their intelligent, thoughtful daughter, Megan.
Troubled Tory Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has denied that his leadership had been fatally wounded by last night’s confidence vote. In fact, he appeared to deny that such a vote had even taken place. “If there was a large group of MPs gathering in the Commons on that particular date, I was certainly unaware of it,” he stated, in comments made this morning. He promised to launch an immediate inquiry to establish both whether such a vote occurred and whether he himself had been there or not.
Mr. Johnson went on to deny hearing crowds booing him on his arrival at both the Platinum Jubilee Service on Friday or at the special Platinum Jubilee Concert held on Saturday evening. “I am not aware of either of these events or this so-called “jubilee” which everyone in the media seems so obsessed with,” he argued. “Honestly, the suggestion that most people care whether or not we have a Queen or whether I once saw a birthday cake while walking past a shop window at a serious time like this is just plain balderdash.” He added: “The media seem to be convinced everyone is partying and celebrating all the time. It simply isn’t true. In the real world, most ordinary people are too busy struggling with the cost of living crisis and other problems which my government created.”
Elsewhere, Culture Secretary, Nadine Dorries also attacked the media claiming recent footage of the Queen sharing tea with Paddington Bear had been faked using “special effects”.
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?
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.
General Election outcomes always seem inevitable when viewed in retrospect. They rarely seem so at the time.
Take the June 1987 election. Although Labour’s position had improved considerably from its 1983 “longest suicide note in history” manifesto crisis point, it was clearly still some way from electability by 1987. Neil Kinnock was clearly a better leader than Michael Foot had been but he was never exactly popular and there was still concerns over the party’s positions on taxation and defence. What was more, having survived both the Miner’s Strike and the Westland Affair, Margaret Thatcher in some ways looked stronger than ever. The economy seemed to be thriving (even though public services were not) and even unemployment having reached the horrendous post-war peak total of 3.6 million was now starting to fall. No surprise then that the Tories won a majority of 102, less than in 1983, but more than in any other Tory election win since 1945 before or since. Only Labour under Attlee and Blair have done better.
This is how the election looks now. As Lord David Young’s campaign diaries remind us, the outcome did not always seem so certain in 1987 itself. At the time, the Tory camp was seriously rattled by Labour’s impressive start to the campaign. Boosted by a famous party political broadcast dubbed ‘Kinnock: The Movie’ by the media and directed by Chariots of Fire’s Hugh Hudson, Labour knocked out the Liberal/SDP Alliance threat posed by ‘the Two Davids’ (Owen and Steel) in one fell swoop. Internally, the Tory campaign occasionally collapsed into panic. On ‘Wobbly Thursday,’ Thatcher (privately suffering from a dental problem on the day), seemed visibly irked during a press conference by questions about opinion polls which seemed to suggest the gap between Labour and the Tories was narrowing and that a Hung Parliament might be on the cards. Behind the scenes, at one point, Norman Tebbit reportedly grabbed David Young by the lapels and shouted, “we’re going to lose this fucking election!”
This didn’t happen, although again in retrospect, it is perhaps unsurprising Margaret Thatcher did not survive to fight her fourth General Election campaign. Although, in fairness, very few political leaders do.
The 1987 election campaign was a long time ago now. Nobody much under forty now remembers it. Nobody now under fifty was old enough to vote in it. Although Thatcher herself died in 2013, it is otherwise the most recent British General Election fought in which most of the key players (campaign manager Young himself, Tebbit, Ken Clarke, Douglas Hurd, Michael Dobbs, Davids Owen and Steel) are still alive as of July 2021.
The book’s blurb is a bit silly (it describes Labour as threatening to return the nation to the three-day-week, a crisis which had previously occurred under an earlier Conservative government). Young has written his memoirs before in 1990’s The Enterprise Years. But these diaries provide plenty of insight into the day-to-day realities of fighting a busy election campaign.
Book review: Inside Thatcher’s Last Election: Diaries of the Campaign That Saved Enterprise, by David Young. Published by: Biteback. Available: now.
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.
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.
At the time of writing, Joe Biden is around forty days into his tenure as 46th president of the USA. It is a basic fact that anyone who has ever become US president is interesting simply on account of the fact that they ever managed to achieve that position. Biden is less charismatic than Obama and not as dynamic as Kennedy, but is certainly much less stupid and unpleasant than Trump. This quick, readable biography offers the perfect opportunity for curious readers to brush up and gain some basic knowledge of the new guy.
He has been around for a while. He is seventy-eight years old, older than any of predecessors in that office and older today than four of the five living former US presidents, Clinton, Bush, Obama and the defeated Trump. It is widely suspected that he only plans to serve one term, leaving Vice President Kamala Harris as the strong favourite to win the Democratic nomination in 2024. If he does manage to serve two terms, Biden will be eighty-seven by the time he leaves office in January 2029.
He is undeniably a member of the political establishment. He was elected as the sixth youngest senator in US history as far back as 1972. He was thus a senator at the time of the Watergate scandal. His first bid for the presidency was launched as long ago as 1987. His rivals for the Democratic nomination then included such long ago vanished political figures as Michael Dukakis, Jesse Jackson and Gary Hart. Biden’s own ambitions were undermined by claims he allegedly plagarised a speech delivered by British Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, never a well-known figure in the United States.
The upside of all this is that Biden is very experienced, an attribute his now disgraced immediate predecessor so clearly lacked. Biden has had a long and successful career as senator and two terms as Barack Obama’s vice president.
Tragedy has been a recurrent feature of his life. His first wife and one-year-old daughter were both killed in a car accident only weeks before he was first sworn in as a senator. His son, Beau, died of cancer in 2015, aged 46. Biden himself was almost felled by aneurysm when he was in his forties.
He is the only the second Roman Catholic to become president and the first former vice president to rise to the top job since George H.W. Bush in 1989. Even a year ago, Biden’s chances of winning the presidency looked doubtful. However, in November, he won, achieving more votes than any other candidate in US history and crucially comfortably beating Trump in the electoral college.
This is not a hagiography. Biden’s occasional lapses – his gaffes and occasional failure to support progressive causes – are not glossed over. But with American politics potentially entering a more compassionate and progressive phase after the unhappy turmoil of the previous four years, this offers a concise and readable insight into the newest resident in the White House.
Book review: Joe Biden – American Dreamer, by Evan Osnos. Published by Bloomsbury.
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.
Chris Hallam's World View 