Secrets Of Statecraft: Nick Thomas-Symonds and the History of the Labour Party | Andrew Roberts | Hoover Institution

>> Andrew Roberts: Nick Thomas-Symonds is a British opposition leader who's also a distinguished historian and the biographer of former Labour Prime Ministers Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson. Nick, history's always been a great passion of yours, hasn't it? You were a politics tutor at St Edmunds Hall, Oxford, but much of your politics there presumably was infused with history.

How useful have you found your passion for history in day-to-day politics?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I found it extraordinarily useful Andrew, and it's great to join you on the podcast, by the way.

>> Andrew Roberts: Thank you.

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think it assists, firstly, because you can contextualize things. When you hear about different things, when different things happen, it enables you to take that longer perspective, because rarely do things in politics come from out of nowhere.

There are usually things, threads running back that you can pick out that lead you to that particular point. But the other thing is that you can look at similar dilemmas that politicians have faced in the past, and it's often instructive to see how those dilemmas were resolved or in some cases, not resolved.

Either of those outcomes I think can be helpful as you consider the dilemmas that present themselves to us in the present.

>> Andrew Roberts: Can you think of an example of that in your own life, your own career at all, either recently or in the past? When was the last time that you feel that to use that Tony Blair expression, you felt the weight of history on your shoulders?

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Well, I have to say what's been taxing me as a politician ever since I came into parliament, is how Labour can win a general election. And of course, while I've been looking back, there are some moments that are in a very specific context, 1945 of course, in that very unique set of circumstances at the end of World War II.

But looking very carefully at those two post-war moments of 1964 and 1997 in particular, as to how it was that those two leads and, by the way, to date, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair are the only two Labour leaders who've won general election since Clement Attlee lost power in 1951.

But looking how they both managed to combine that vision about the future with a real sense in their manifestos as to how they could help people's everyday lives. At last, Andrews is a Labour politician, looking back at these moments of winning for instruction on a quite regular basis.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, you've written a political biography of Clement Attlee and of Nye Bevin and of course, Harold Wilson. We'll come on to Harold Wilson in a moment. For Tory like me, Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan seem to represent two very different aspects of the Labour Party. Attlee, perhaps deliberately uncharismatic but business laconic centrist leader who got an enormous amount done and changed British society fundamentally.

And then you've also got Bevan, who was a thorn in the side of the establishment, a great orator, charismatic on the left. Who never really rose above health secretary, although, of course, his monument is the NHS. Is that unfair? Am I characterizing them wrongly? Do you see them as being two different sides of the Labour coin?

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think they are in stark contrast, temperamentally. I don't think there's any doubt about that. Clem Attlee was a classic chairperson leader with some limited exceptions I would say India, and indeed the decision for the United Kingdom to have its own nuclear weapon. With those particular exceptions, he tended to allow his ministers to get on with it.

He was very understated, almost allergic to the press, wasn't keen to engage in that part of politics at all. Indeed, when his press secretary Francis Williams wanted to ensure that Clem was regularly updated on the news, you may recall the old ticker tape machines that used to exist.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, yes, absolutely, yes.

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Yes, and-

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: The only way he could persuade Clem Attlee to have such a thing installed was if Clem would be regularly updated on the Middlesex cricket scores. I mean, the idea of being constantly updated on the news did not appeal to Clem Attlee in any way.

And he had this very clipped and laconic way of speaking. Nye Bevan was very much a stormy petrel. Nye was a great, passionate orator, but somebody who was also capable of fits of temper that were often to his own detriment throughout his career. I don't think though that they are quite as far apart politically as might be suggested.

If you look at the Attlee government and Aneurin Bevan certainly up until the early part of 1951, was a very loyal member of it and was certainly very committed to its central mission. I think the contrast you raise as well is also an interesting one in terms of the decision that Clem Attlee made in 1945 to appoint Aneurin Bevan to the cabinet.

Because there is a world in which he wouldn't have been appointed. Remember, Bevan had been at times a critic of the wartime coalition and of course, Clem Attlee was a central part of the wartime coalition. So you could see a scenario where Clem Attlee held a grudge about that, as someone else might well have done.

But I think it's to Clem Atlee's great credit in 1945, that he saw Bevan as this great creative force, but believed he needed to be harnessed. Believed that for him to be at his most creative, needed the discipline of being a minister. I think Clem Attlee's decision to appoint Nye as Minister of Health and Housing turned out to be an inspired one.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: And how key is that moment in Labour Party history, when Bevan and others including Wilson, resign over the paying for spectacles and false teeth?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: It is a seminal moment in post-war Labour history. It was about much more than that issue, though that is ostensibly what caused it.

That budget of early 1951, Hugh Gaitskell as the chancellor wanting to introduce those charges for teeth and spectacles. But it was also about the great rivalry between Aneurin Bevan, Hugh Gaitskell. They were the two leaders of the next generation post-Attlee. It was likely that one of them, it turned out to be Gaitskell would succeed Attlee.

But it was also about this great defense program that the government was committed to after Clem Attlee crossed the Atlantic to see Truman around the start of the Korean War. Now, Nye opposed that on a variety of different grounds, supported martial aid before Felt this was a move to a more confrontational style of American foreign policy, but also doubted that that huge amount of money could be spent in the time available.

And indeed, it actually wasn't. There's a nice Winston Churchill speech, which you may have come across in your great biography, Andrew. In early 1952, when Churchill remarks, but perhaps not with the best of motives, but the member forever veil did turn out to be, did turn out to be right about this.

So there was that real, real clash, but I think it also represented as well, in terms of the Labour party, something else, I think. Because in 1950, there'd been a symposium at Dorking in June, in the early part of the summer of that year. And, of course, in one sense, the attlee government was a victim of its own success, because it had implemented, quite rarely for a post war government, virtually everything that was in its manifesto.

And the debate was, where does labor go from here? And the debate at that conference you could almost transpose to any of the postwar sections of Labour Party history. It's essentially, do you continue down the route of the Attlee government around further nationalization? Or do you accept that society is changing, that society will be looking far more towards private consumer affluence?

And, of course, the person who makes the argument in 1950 that Labour should be, as it were, moving to center and looking at this is Herbert Morrison. So it's almost like this division between a more pragmatic side of Labour and a more ideological side of Labour. And that 1951 clash, so seismic on so many different levels, but also, in a sense, represents that division.

And that division between a more ideological purity versus pragmatism in terms of seeking power runs right through Labour's postwar history.

>> Andrew Roberts: And where is Wilson on this, because he is one of the people who resigns along with Bevan over spectacles. And yet he's also the figure who essentially unites the party by the time he becomes prime minister in 1964, doesn't he?

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: He does.

>> Andrew Roberts: Before that, I mean, essentially, as well. And when he takes over from Gaitskell he starts this, doesn't he?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Yes, I think it says a great deal, because in the 1950s there is this clash between Bevan and Gaitskell. Gaitskell wins the leadership decisively in 1955, and there is a rapprochement between Bevan and Gateskill post the 1955 general election.

But it says a great deal that the person who comes to unite the Labour Party and bring it back to power is someone who'd resigned with Aneurin Bevan and John Freeman. Was a Bevanite in that grouping in the early 50s but had moved by the mid-1950s, took Bevan's place, actually, in the Shadow Cabinet in 1954, and then supported Gaitskell for leadership in 1955.

And we can see some evidence there of one of Harold Wilson's great political skills, that he could unite across the political divides in the Labour party, and did so very successfully for Labour to win power in 1964.

>> Andrew Roberts: And was this partly because he saw that if you do get too ideological, if you do go too far to the left, then, as happened in October 1951, the Tories win, and you're not in a position to change society, however much you try.

I mean, there is an element, isn't there, of the more ideological or left wing element of the Labour Party playing with fire, as it were, if you lose the electorate?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Yes, and interestingly, with Harold Wilson, he is the one party leader post-war who brought his party back to power after only one term in opposition.

And, of course, one of the things he was able to do as opposition leader in the early seventies, again, was to keep bringing Labour back to pragmatism. And Harold's view of this was that he wanted to keep the party united. But above all, he wanted a Labour party that was in a position to win general elections, speaking to the immediate priorities of the British people.

And I think that's one of the reasons why he won four of the five general elections he contested.

>> Andrew Roberts: An extraordinary amount of time in office for eight years as prime minister. Your latest book on him is subtitled The Winner, and it's an unashamedly revisionist work. It rehabilitates him, as Keir Starmer says, that it puts Harold Wilson in his rightful place.

What do you believe is that rightful place in Labour history? And considering how successful he was, why did he need to be rehabilitated?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Well, I think you put your finger on one of the issues that I discovered when I started the biography, Andrew, because my two previous biographical subjects, both have deservedly high reputations.

I'm never entirely convinced with these so-called prime-ministerial league tables, but if you look at-

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: The peacetime prime ministers post-war, Clem Attlee always tends to feature, doesn't he, in the top one, two, or three? He's always towards the very top.

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah.

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Aneurin Bevan has a very high reputation for the creation of the National Health Service, which I think gives him an argument for being one of the most constructive postwar ministers who didn't hold the office of prime minister.

So both Attlee and Bevan have this reputation. What puzzled me about Harold Wilson was that here you had someone who'd won four general elections. He had also, in my view, produced changes, social changes. Changes in the employment field, the anti-discrimination legislation on race relations, the Sex Discrimination Act, open university, there's another thing, a whole host of things that, in my view, were landmark achievements.

Because I think the test is always to look at what the opposing party does when it comes back to power. And if the opposing party doesn't repeal things and accepts the inheritance, that's always an indication that the previous government has brought about lasting change. And so many of Harold's changes still shape society today, so this was the puzzle.

And I think it's partly because the things that people tended to remember about him were negative. The so-called pound in your pocket broadcast from 1967, which was regarded by some as misleading, the whole so-called Lavender List resignation honours, but also, to a certain extent, because the 1980s and Margaret Thatcher's 11 years in power.

Margaret Thatcher, amongst many other things, tended to define against the previous era. She tended to define against this decline at 60s and 70s. And then, of course, by the time labour comes to the mid 1990s to start to be getting to a stage of winning power, the last thing labour of the 1990s wanted to do was to start harking back to the 60s and 70s, so they were looking forwards.

So what it meant is that there was this partial neglect of Harold Wilson, but also the fact that it was in the interests of governments that followed to define him negatively. And as a consequence, in my view, his real achievements became very, very obscured.

>> Andrew Roberts: And also, of course, there's the modernizing achievements with regard to, you mentioned, sex discrimination, but also, of course, homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment.

I mean, these were, as you say, these were things that fundamentally changed british society and which the incoming Tory government didn't do anything about, didn't try to row back, and neither of any sense. So he can, in a sense, on the social level, be seen as one of the game changers, the weather making prime ministers.

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think that's absolutely true. And I think, again, one of the things that really struck me when I looked at these, of course, many of them deliberately started life as private members bills or with MP sponsors for the whole reason that they wanted to seek more cross party support for these measures.

Sidney Silverman campaigning for abolition of the death penalty. David Steele on the Abortion Act. My predecessor, but one for my constituency, Leo Absi, both for the Sexual Offenses Act for divorce law reform. But of course, the way that those works, they can only get onto the statute book, if, the government of the day is prepared to make sure they get the parliamentary time.

And Harold, I think, makes two decisive contributions. The first is the appointment of Roy Jenkins as home secretary in December 1965 to replace Frank Soskis. Jenkins had written about this in the late 1950s. This more liberal social agenda was a central plank of his political philosophy. But secondly, in that era, from 1964, certainly to late 1967, the three dominant figures of that government were George Brown, Jim Callaghan and Harold Wilson.

Both Jim and George felt that government time shouldn't be being used on these things. These were not proper things for the government to get involved in. And it was Harold, actually, who made sure that particularly Jenkins had the space for these things to get onto the statute book.

And again, I think it's a series of lasting changes for which Harold Wilson has received little or no credit.

>> Andrew Roberts: There always seemed to be a mystery wasn't there about why Harold Wilson suddenly resigned in the way that he did in March 1976. He was only two years into governing, after his electional victory.

He was still only 60 years old. The dementia that he later suffered from had not revealed itself. There didn't seem to be a health reason. It's a perfectly understandable question to ask, why did he go? Now you argue that he told his family and he told the Queen that he was going to go, yes, fair enough, but that doesn't explain why he actually did.

Was it really genuinely to spend more time with his family? Or did he feel like we've just seen Jacinda Ardern and Nicola Sturgeon just deciding that they wanna stop.

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think there is a real element of exhaustion about him, particularly in the second government. I do think that's an underrated government, by the way.

And I've set out in the book, particularly the employment law changes, obviously, the stewardship of the European referendum, amongst other things, that were achievements for that government. But there are things that really do stand out that show the extent to which he was tired. There's a story in the book where Harold, like every good party leader, would hold a proper reception for his whips office at the end of each parliamentary term to thank them for their work.

And he had this memory trick where junior members of the whips office, or newly appointed whips. He would take around the parliamentary estate, take around the palace of Westminster, and would be able to point to each and every painting, could tell you the opus commission, could tell you the title, could tell you the painter.

And there's a story in the book from Lord Tom Pendry about how in the summer of 1975, he was doing that, but very suddenly, there was a painting where he just couldn't quite recall it. There's another story in the book where he's at one of the European renegotiation summits with Jim Callaghan, and he literally can't make the speech that he wants to.

He doesn't feel he can do it. He's afraid that he's gonna lose the thread of the speech. And Jim gave the speech and nobody really noticed because Jim was the foreign secretary. So it wasn't really surprising that the foreign secretary should give a speech. So nobody really noticed.

And also having to drink brandy before prime minister's questions. There are so many signs there in that 1974, 1976 period of how truly exhausted he was. And, of course, that factors into when he keeps the promise to his wife Mary to stand down after the two years.

>> Andrew Roberts: There are lots of things that surprise me in this book.

But the thing that shocked me, which I had no idea about, was that MI5 bugged the cabinet from 1963 to 1977. I mean, that is a truly astonishing thing. Are we able to listen to those recordings? I'm assuming not. It would be extremely useful, wouldn't it, for a historian to be able to listen to MI5's tape recordings of cabinet meetings in those days.

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: It would be extraordinary, wouldn't it, as a historian? I mean, if it was available, I think that we'd be sort of-

>> Andrew Roberts: Valuable.

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: The first in the queue to try to, but-

>> Andrew Roberts: You were shadow homosexually, can't you ask them nicely?

>> Andrew Roberts: But what else does your book tell us, the previous works?

Cuz he did, of course, write his own voluminous memoirs himself, didn't he? What else does your book tell us that we didn't know before about?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: So what I think was important here is to look at where the new material was coming from. And I did get his unpublished autobiography, which I'm very grateful to the Wilson family for providing.

That, of course, contains some of his views about other characters that I was able to draw on. The Lyndon Johnson library in Texas, I should also say a word for, because they were extraordinarily helpful and were able to send me dropboxes of sheaths of documents, which were very, very useful in terms of the real pressure that Harold came under in terms of committing troops to Vietnam.

There was a real robustness about the way that Lyndon Johnson sought to pressurize him into even providing a very small number of troops to Vietnam to assist the Americans in that situation. Also, of course, I could use the papers at the National Archive, which hadn't been available to Ben Pimlott and Philip Ziegler.

So all this enables me to give that greater picture together with the interviews I did with people at the time. But I think the one thing really that that stuck out to me is, of course, he had a reputation, still does, to a certain extent, of the short termist, the prime minister, lacking in principle, the person going with unity at all costs.

And yet, it was his stewardship of the European issue that really did fascinate me, which is one where he's had a lot of criticism. And yet, I did like the conversation the day after the 1975 referendum where of course he'd secured the result that he'd wanted. And I interviewed both the late Robert Armstrong and indeed Robin Butler who were both at that time in close proximity as civil servants.

And there's this lovely moment where by the way, the Daily Telegraph praised Harold very much and said the result was frankly a triumph for Mr. Wilson. But he sits down that day after the referendum, when he secured the 2-1 result. And whatever your particular perspective on Europe, that was the result the prime minister was trying to secure, and thats the result he did secure.

And he says, people say to me I've got no sense of strategy but actually I've spent over ten years getting to this particular moment and I think it's a revealing comment. And even someone like Roy Jenkins, who ostensibly in the early seventies was in a different position on this debate, had opposed the holding of the referendum and of course rebelled against the Labour whip in 1971 to vote in favor of entry.

Even he later recognized that actually maybe with what Harold achieved, his stewardship was far better than I gave him credit for at the time.

>> Andrew Roberts: Now, your next book, you're gonna be in much more choppy waters aren't you, politically, because it's about Ramsey Macdonald who is still considered the great sort of traitor to socialism within the Labour party.

Tell us about him. Are you gonna write a revisionist biography resuscitating his reputation?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Well Andrew, I've speculated on a number of different subjects for my next. I'm hoping to be very busy over the next few years and perhaps have a little break from the writing for a little while.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, now I'm not saying you're about to publish it anytime soon, but the concept of Ramsay MacDonald is a much more tricky one, isn't he, for a Labour politician like you?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I mean Ramsey Macdonald has always fascinated me because when I was writing the book on Clement Attlee, Clement Attlee in 1945, of course, the general election held in July, Clem Attlee wins the landslide.

And then there's the Labour Party conference later in the year, Clem Attlee is announced as Britain's first socialist prime minister. Now if ever there was writing somebody out of history completely, then there it was. And what's always fascinating about Ramsay MacDonald, obviously, that seminal 1931 decision to join the national government and to abandon the Labour Party, which is by anyone's measure a huge moment in the first half of the 20th century in British politics.

But what fascinated me was that you would have to give him enormous credit for the Labour Party becoming a party of government. He is central to that in terms of not only the building up of the party machinery, along with Arthur Henderson, but also its respectability to both become the government in 1924 and then, of course, the first time.

Although Labour didn't win a majority in 1929, they were for the first time, the largest party at an election. And this contradiction between this politician who did so much to make Labour a party of government, but then, of course, Nia destroys it in 1931, has always fascinated me.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: And do you think that he did, as he was accused of doing, succumb to the aristocratic embrace or great phrase? Or do you not think that what he did was the patriotic thing to do at the time of massive world dislocation of trade? You're the trade minister, and imagine what you'd have tried to have done or needed to do after the Wall Street crash, for example.

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Look, I think each western government was swept away eventually by the Wall Street crash, so nobody is doubting the seismic nature of those events. I've always thought there was a mixture of motives in what MacDonald did. I don't think it's so easy to pick out one or the other.

And this is one of the reasons why he's always fascinated me to try to look at those days, those remarkable days, in August of 1931, where, of course, the Labour cabinet couldn't agree. First of all, on the way forward, the to and fro between him and, of course, the king and the decisions that he ends up making.

And I think, unpicking that, as a historian, has always been something of great interest to me.

>> Andrew Roberts: Well, we look forward to that. To move on from Labour Party history. In August 2022, you had the great honour of being one of 39 Britons to be banned from entering Russia, which, first of all, congratulations for that.

That's quite a thing. Secondly, do you think history provides us with any guide as to where this war's going?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think it provides us, first of all, with a sure guide as to the kind of person we are dealing with in terms of Putin and Russia. How many times have we seen this in Europe, unfortunately, where we've had dictators, and that's what Putin is, dictators who are seeking to overrun the sovereign territory of another nation.

And I think its meant a great deal, I think, that we've had over the Ukraine war since that invasion of February last year, a real strong cross party consensus. And I thought it was symbolic when we, I was privileged to be at the front of Westminster hall to hear that address from President Zelenskyy.

And it was good to see both the cabinet and shadow cabinet, and indeed other party leaders too, all stood as one at the front, which I thought was extraordinarily important. The second thing, though, I think history does tell us around this is you have to be prepared to stay the course.

And of course, we're very supportive of the government providing assistance to Ukraine and we need to continue now to do that and to be prepared for the fact that this may not, sadly, have a swift conclusion.

>> Andrew Roberts: So history does give us a sense of not necessarily what's gonna happen tomorrow, but what we need to continue to do in terms of supporting Ukraine.

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think so. And when you look at the history and you've done this, Andrew, you've written both Napoleon and Churchill, so you've seen this in terms of the different perspectives across the centuries. They do give us, of course, a context, they do give us guide. Of course, nobody's suggesting it's a perfect repeat of history.

We both know that doesn't happen, but they do give us a sense of the different places that something like this could lead to.

>> Andrew Roberts: Where do you think we are at the moment, Nick, on the sort of history matters, struggles that we're having in this country at the moment with regard to renaming streets.

Because they were named after imperialists or taking down statues and so on, what's your sense of how this is playing out at the moment?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Well, I taught history and politics for best part of 14 years before I became a member of parliament, my view always was that it was not my job to teach my students what to think.

My job, I hope, was to teach them how to think. It was to encourage them to be able to look critically at history, to be able to look at the sources that particular views came from, and to compare it with other sources and to make up their own minds.

And I've never wavered from that belief in history. History is there, you can't hide bits of it. History is there. What I've always believed in is trying to give as many people as possible the tools, if you like, to be able to make up their own minds and take their own analysis of it.

And by the way, the other point I would just make is one of the great things about history, in my view, is debate around history. And even today, I've been out at a post 16 college in my own constituency, debating young students about various different things. And that kind of healthy debate is what I want to see across our society.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: There's a question I ask, two questions that I ask every one of my guests. The first one is, what history book or biography you're reading at the moment. What have you got on your bedside table?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I'm actually rereading a book at the moment that I read some years ago and I'd forgotten how beautifully written it is.

And it's Dennis Healy's Memoir, The Time of My Life. And I've been thinking about Dennis Healy quite a bit in recent days, actually, because, of course, Dennis Healy is the one who said that every politician needs a hinterland. I suppose history is very much part of my hinterland, but it's also a reminder that if you want to be in politics, or indeed public life, which can be all consuming, you do, in my view, need those other interests as well.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: He had a hell of a hinterland, didn't he? I mean, not least being a beachmaster on D-Day.

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Absolutely, and you know him as soldier. But you remember as well, even when he was a front ranked politician, of course, with the Exchequer, and it was very difficult, the pressured 1970s days for five years, the interest in music, poetry, literature, all the things that gave him such a rich life, were remarkable.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Do you think we've lost a bit of that? I mean, I'm also thinking, although Ted Heath wasn't my favourite politician, you think of him, his yachting, his music, his professional level conductor. Are there those kind of sort of renaissance men still in politics? Or his politics changed just so much with social media and all the time pressures and so on, that it's next to impossible to have people with those kind of internals?

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: You can't imagine a prime minister taking part in an ocean yachting race these days, can you, in the way that Ted Heath did. I do think, and this is a reminder to all of us in public life, that that distinction between, if you like what Dennis Healy called the hinterland, and then the forward facing or front facing part of your life, which he thought was so important.

I do think in the social media age, it's increasingly difficult to maintain that distinction because social media is almost ever present, unless you're very careful. If you're a politician, everyone, you go, there's this possibility of someone takes a photograph or whatever you're doing is recorded. But I think it's a reminder to all of us that, however all consuming the debates of the day are, we all have to try to make that space in our lives for other things, even though I do think it is more difficult now than it was 40, 50 years ago.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: And what's your favorite what if? What's the counterfactual that you enjoy?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Well, I'm gonna choose one of the post war British politics counterfactuals, which fascinates me. And it's what if Jim Callaghan had called a general election in October 1978, before the so called winter of discontent?

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Yes, much more difficult for Margaret Thatcher to win that. I mean, all the polls suggest that he'd have won. He was already getting on, wasn't he? How long do you think he would have carried on? Would he have done a Wilson and handed on to somebody in the next generation after a couple of years?

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Yeah, it's difficult to-

>> Andrew Roberts: By about, what, 1980 or so?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: It's difficult to see that Jim would have done a full parliament. But again, I think Jimmy is underrated in a number of different ways. I think what happened to Jim is he gets defined by that final winter.

Well, actually, if you look at where the opinion polls were, if you look at his approval ratings in 78, they actually weren't in a bad position. But, of course, that fateful decision in autumn of 1978, and then what turned out to be a real, real change making defeat in May 1979 is what came to define him.

But I think he actually deserves more credit for his performance as prime minister than others have given him.

>> Andrew Roberts: And then who would have taken over from Jim Callaghan? Say, Jim Callaghan stays in power for 18 months or two years, like Wilson did after the 74 election. Who's front runner?

Are we talking about, gosh, I don't know who was, I mean, Dennis Healey perhaps-

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think-

>> Andrew Roberts: In a strong position, wouldn't he?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: I think Dennis Healey is in the strong position because, I mean, Jim timed his resignation in 1980 so that MPs exclusively still had the power to choose the next leader.

And, of course, he undoubtedly would have preferred Dennis Healey to Michael Foot. And Dennis Healey only lost to Michael Foot in very different circumstances by about, I think it was 10 votes, 139, 129.

>> Andrew Roberts: What about his counterfactual on your counterfactual. If you have Roy Jenkins as leader, then you don't have the SDP, do you, in 1982?

And you don't split the vote, and the Tories certainly don't have a chance to come back at all in the 1980s, do they?

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Well, though Roy Jenkins, of course, had left in 1976, hadn't he gone to Brussels?

>> Andrew Roberts: Yeah, but did he come back? If we're doing counterfactuals, you're allowed to take a journey back from Brussels to London.

It's not asking too much for the counterfactuals.

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Okay, let's assume he'd made the journey back. I think that the point you make is a really interesting one, actually, cuz, yes, Roy Jenkins, you certainly don't get the split. You don't get the formation of the SDP, which, again, I think is an underplayed part of 1980s history, because that split on the left and center left is obviously helpful to Margaret Thatcher.

 

>> Andrew Roberts: Fantastic, well, thank you so much, Nick. I appreciate that. And obviously, I hope that you'll be writing your Ramsey Macdonald book very soon. But it sounds like you might be quite busy doing other things if things go wrong for my party. Very nice to have spoken to you, and I really appreciate the fascinating things you have to say about Labour Party history.

 

>> Nick Thomas-Symonds: Lovely to join you, Andrew. Thank you very, very much indeed, I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

>> Andrew Roberts: My thanks to Nick Thomas-Symonds for an invigorating conversation. Join us for the next Secrets of Statecraft podcast, where my guest will be former national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton.

 

>> Announcer: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we advance ideas that define a free society and improve the human condition. For more information about our work or to listen to more of our podcasts or watch our videos, please visit hoover.org.