Will There Ever Be Another Prime Ministerial Retread?
Harold Wilson was the last Prime Minister to return to office after a period in the wilderness. Paul Linford doubts history will ever repeat itself.
30 Jun 2011, 00:34
The last prime ministerial retread
They were, in chronological order: Lord Derby (1858-59 and 1866-68), Lord Palmerston (1859-65), Lord John Russell (1865-66), Benjamin Disraeli (1874-80), William Gladstone (1880-85, 1886 and 1892-94), Lord Salisbury (1895-1902), Stanley Baldwin (1924-29 and 1935-37), Ramsay Macdonald (1929-35), and Winston Churchill (1951-55).
But over the course of the ensuing six decades, only one politician has managed the feat - Harold Wilson, who bounced back as head of a minority government in February 1974, four years after having unexpectedly lost the 1970 general election.
Such have been the changes in our political culture and society over that period that it is tempting to think that he may well turn out to be the last.
Whereas the likes of Gladstone enjoyed careers in frontline politics spanning up to half a century, there is now a commonly held view that politicians have a built-in sell-by-date of about 10-15 years at the top of the tree.
Tony Blair acknowledged this when he announced, in September 2004, that he would not seek a fourth term in office, saying he did not think the British people would want their Prime Minister to go on that long - although some might argue that they had already grown tired of him long before then. Wider social attitudes about the relative merits of youth and old age, and the contribution that the over-60s can make to our national life, have also played a part.
The last three Prime Ministers - John Major, Mr Blair and Gordon Brown - all effectively retired from frontline politics in their mid-to-late 50s. By contrast Churchill was 66 when he first got the job, while Palmerston was over 70.
Another factor is the recent trend for politicians to leave the Commons more or less immediately after ceasing to be Prime Minister, thereby closing the door on what might in former days have been potential comeback opportunities.
There has always been a belief in some quarters that had Margaret Thatcher still been in the Commons after 'Black Wednesday' in 1992, she might have been able to supplant her beleaguered successor, although as ever when it comes to the Iron Lady, opinions divide on this.
Similarly, there is an outside possibility that had Mr Blair remained in Parliament after 2007, the Labour Party might, in its desperation, have turned back to him to rescue them from certain defeat as Mr Brown's premiership ploughed deeper and deeper into the mire.
I don't necessarily buy either scenario, but you cannot be Prime Minister if you are not in the House of Commons, and Gladstone's repeated comebacks at moments of crisis for the country or party in the 1880s and 90s provide at least some historical precedent.
So what of the current incumbent? By 19th and early-20th century standards, David Cameron is still young enough to have at least 20-30 years of high office in front of him, but it is fairly inconceivable that he will still be a major political player in 2041.
Rightly or wrongly, Mr Cameron comes over as one of those people for whom politics is not the be-all-and-end-all, and it is hard to see him wanting to "go on and on and on" Thatcher-style even if he were to win a second-term in 2015.
It is even harder to foresee the circumstances in which, having lost the 2015 election after also failing to win the last one outright, he might somehow contrive to hang on to the Tory leadership – or be re-elected to it at a later date.
After all, the last Conservative leader to lose an election, and still survive as party leader, was Churchill in 1945 - and he had just won a world war.
Perhaps the likeliest scenario for a Cameron comeback would be another Coalition, with a fifty- or sixty-something Dave stepping forward, perhaps a little reluctantly, as an emollient 'elder statesman' figure capable of uniting the disparate factions following an inconclusive election result.
This, too, has a 19th century precedent - the Duke of Portland, who became Prime Minister for the second time in 1807 as the acceptable figurehead for a fractious group of ministers including George Canning and Viscount Castlereagh, whose political differences eventually saw them fight a duel in 1809.
But in answer to my own question, Prime Ministerial 'retreads' are one political tradition I do not necessarily expect to see revived in my lifetime - even if coalitions were to become a more common feature of the Westminster scene.
And when you look at what some of those political greats of the past achieved in their riper years, I sense I may not be alone in feeling a tinge of regret at that.
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