Prime Ministers have come and gone, but for me Churchill was the big winner
AS I write my column this week, the main subject in the background is the selection of a new leader of the Tory party to replace Boris Johnson. I have lived through the times of a lot of Prime Ministers, starting with Winston Churchill. He was appointed initially in 1940 before I was born, but he then lost the election in 1945 to Labour. He won the next election and came back as Prime Minister again in 1951.
I rated Churchill as a Prime Minister, I suspect because I saw him as the leader who won the war for the allies. He eventually chose to stand down in 1955 because he was told by colleagues he was getting too old, and since then we have had a lot of Prime Ministers, Conservative and Labour, and in reality none have seemed to last very long in office. Sometimes the parties may have a leader who never gets to be prime minister because their party is not in power.
Premiers I remember the most include Ted Heath, who served twice, with Harold Wilson and the Labour Party in between. He lost an election the second time which he had called to let the electorate choose whether he or the miners’ union should run the country! The electorate chose the miners, and duly voted Labour to stop the strikes we had at that time.
Ted Heath was then replaced as leader of the Conservatives by Margaret Thatcher, much to his annoyance, and I doubt he ever forgave her.
Wilson was another who resigned as Prime Minister, albeit unexpectedly. I was at a meeting in County Hall in March 1976 when we were informed that he had stood down. At the time I am sure he was considered a good PM, and Jim Callaghan, who was the Deputy Prime Minister, simply replaced him. Wilson had not made any errors that should have forced him out. I was simply told some years later that he believed he had the beginning of Alzheimer’s and felt he should retire.
The general election in 1979 saw the new Prime Minister we all expected. Margaret Thatcher took over and there is little doubt she ruled the country without allowing the cabinet much input.
Her decision that I consider was wrong was permitting the sale of council houses. If you had lived in the house long enough there was a big discount. The houses were not replaced and the current shortage of social housing is directly attributable to these sales.
Mrs Thatcher, I thought, would never leave the role as PM, but eventually, just like Boris Johnson, she was told she had to go.
In her case it was her insistence to introduce the Poll Tax that caused her demise.
John Major was brought in to replace her and he duly won an election for five more years, before in 1997 Tony Blair became Prime Minister. Like Mrs Thatcher, Blair enjoyed a long spell in office, and I do suspect they have been the only Prime Ministers to serve a lengthy term. Boris arguably should have been the next long-serving given the massive majority his Party gained in the General Election in 2019. He thought so too, as he has often declared, but somehow he chose to forget he was only elected to represent Uxbridge, not the whole country!
Now he has been forced out by parliamentary colleagues, and will only stay in Parliament if he stands in his seat to be re-elected, maybe in another two years’ time.
I would never have wanted the job, even assuming I became an MP! But the candidates lining up to be chosen can’t all get the job. Apparently it will have reduced to a shortlist within days, and then we must wait to hear who is chosen from the final two.