The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success and Failure from Butler to Corbyn

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Courthope 1838, p.9; Eccleshall & Walker 2002, p.61; Englefield, Seaton & White 1995, pp.52–56; Venning 2005, p.93; Vincitorio 1968, p.156.

Eccleshall & Walker 2002, p.54; Englefield, Seaton & White 1995, pp.45–50; Kebbel 1864, p.143; Venning 2005, p.93. To take some recent examples, Tony Blair and David Cameron came in due to elections in 1997 and 2010, while Gordon Brown, Theresa May and Boris Johnson all entered office following the resignation of their predecessors. The remaining 17 changeovers happened outside of elections. Of those 17, three were followed by an election called within 50 days of the new Prime Minister taking office.Even though we were young teenagers, we were both aware of the significance of his death and the hole it left in British politics.

Chamberlain, Joseph, President of the Board of Trade (27 March 1884). "Second Reading—Adjourned Debate". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Vol.286. House of Commons. col.954. Archived from the original on 2 September 2018. This matter was brought before the House on the 13th of May, 1874... It was opposed... by Mr. Disraeli, who was then the Leader of the House. The angle, looking at those who were touted for the top job but never achieved it, allows for a lot more insight than I would have expected. I actually found it much more interesting and revealing than books charting the PMS we did get. Grube, Dennis (2013). Prime Ministers and Rhetorical Governance. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-31836-7. Having been a member of the party for a number of years, deeply disappointed after the 1992 election result and having shared a London to Edinburgh shuttle with John, I was devastated on this day as the news filtered through. I was not alone at work that day in shedding a few tears. I stood outside Cluny Kirk the evening of his funeral and just knew that Labour could not lose the 1997 election.

Hung Parliaments

I accept that answering that question would have been answering a hypothetical which is hardly definitive. However, this is arguably an odd omission given that the “what if” element in the title and aim of this book is in large part it’s main spark of interest to potential readers. I found that it was easier to fill in the blanks on this question with those potential leaders who were determinedly reformist cabinet ministers, since their policy fixations help provide valuable clues. Occasionally, such as in the Ken Clarke chapter the author took time to explain away public misconceptions about particular figures. This was useful in making clear points about their world views.

What Prime Ministers could the UK have had? What made them potential leaders and what stopped them from getting to their ultimate goal? These are the questions explored in depth in this book. Wingate, Sophie (6 September 2022). "Liz Truss to become UK's third female prime minister". independent.co.uk. Independent . Retrieved 25 October 2022. The Annual Register 1946, p.11; Butler & Butler 2010, pp.17–21, 77; Eccleshall & Walker 2002, p.295; Englefield, Seaton & White 1995, pp.276–282; The London Gazette 1924.Yet Corbyn was not alone in feeling ambivalent about becoming PM. Richards rightly stresses how often impostor syndrome has stalked the corridors of power and crippled the campaigns of even those who were more ruthlessly single-minded (though not necessarily more talented) than Corbyn. Rab Butler and Roy Jenkins both wanted the top job, but not enough to kill for it. Barbara Castle (the book’s only woman) was flattered to be tipped. But she never trimmed or plotted to get there ahead of Margaret Thatcher, arguably her inferior in brains, energy and courage, though – at that stage – much less abrasive. A similar sense of modesty might well have rescued Where Power Stops, David Runciman’s new collection of essays on political books. I say “new”: actually, only the introduction and the afterword are new; the rest are revisions of pieces that Runciman penned for the London Review of Books. Collections of this type are always something of a challenge to review: taken singly, the essays are well-written meditations on a biography or memoir of a major political figure; presented together as reflections on the nature of personality and what they reveal about the limits of power renders them irksome. The introduction, which claims that “once we can understand the character of a person, we can follow that character behind the curtain and get to see what is really there”, writes a cheque that the essays cannot cash, because Runciman is not familiar with the character of the people he is writing about – he is familiar with books written about and by them.