Authentic voices

RIP Lords Howe and Healey. Both deaths are milestones

It’s the passing of an age and we will not see their like again. But considering how long it is since they were in their pomp, both Geoffrey Howe, who died on Friday, and Denis Healey, who preceded him by a week, are of striking relevance to today’s political debates.

Rambunctiously right-wing, pro-Nato, pro-American, but Labour to the core and unshakeably loyal, Healey is a painful reminder of how much vigour and credibility has drained from the party in the generation since he beat Tony Benn to the deputy leadership. Presentation, packaging and plausibility won three general elections for Tony Blair’s New Labour, but in the process the party’s identity went missing. Old Labour may have been tribal, vicious and at the mercy of antiquated economic notions, but watching film of Healey bellowing good sense at conference brings home the party’s achievement in retaining the support of millions. Jeremy Corbyn may indeed be “authentic”, but whether he will ever command that sort of broad backing is open to serious doubt.

Lord Howe was Mrs Thatcher’s longestserving minister until he brought her down with his resignation speech, and the issue that divided them most painfully – European integration – still runs like an ugly wound through the Conservative Party, as the launching of the In and Out campaigns for the EU referendum has brought home. The euro had not yet been invented when Howe and Thatcher parted company, but its predecessor, the Exchange Rate Mechanism, was a live issue. And it was the Prime Minister’s declaration in Rome that Britain would never enter a single currency which precipitated Howe’s resignation.

Rock-solid, “a quiet hero”, as David Cameron put it, and above all a chap, Howe was the anchor of the Thatcher years. But, 25 years on, which of the two, Thatcher or Howe, now seems more prescient about the single currency?