Deciders meet deliverers

On 4 April 2013 David Cameron was “winched from a helicopter onto HMS Victorious, one of our Trident nuclear submarines” to quote from his own account later that day. According to a local newspaper, the Lennox Herald:

Mr Cameron joined the submarine at sea as it finished an 88-day mission and spent time with crew members on board the giant strategic missile submarine and visited the vessel’s operations room, messes and living spaces.

Photographs of Cameron on board HMS Victorious at the end of the 100th Trident patrol appeared in the national press the following day (see above).

Then on 8 April the death of Lady Thatcher started a flood of media articles in the days before the funeral on 17 April. One was by Angela Huth in the Daily Mail on 11 April:

Back in 1986, a producer friend at the BBC suggested that a book I had written, The English Woman’s Wardrobe, would make a good documentary film. The book was not about fashion, but about women’s feelings about their clothes. Princess Margaret was the star of the printed version: we wanted Mrs Thatcher to take that role in the film. Amazingly, she agreed.

At Number 10 the PM

… led us into the sitting room. There, some 20 different garments were hanging before us on a long clothes rack. She had abandoned her lunch break to heave them from her bedroom into the sitting room. … Mrs Thatcher remembered the history of everything on the rack, and described each one with merry recall. She pointed to a severe beige suit. ‘This we wore on a visit to the Polaris missile,’ she explained, with a touch of nostalgia. The ‘we’ she referred to meant, I think, she and her dressmaker.

The beige suit is probably the garment fourth from the right below.

A clue to “Polaris missile” can be found on the Margaret Thatcher Foundation’s (MTF) excellent website, which has recently made available her private files for 1982:

On 31 July MT paid a visit to HMS Resolution, one of the four Polaris submarines carrying Britain's strategic nuclear deterrent, a visit held so secret in advance that her appointment diary was left blank for the day: we only have timings for it because she kept the tiny engagement card she received each morning detailing the appointments for the day ahead. (Generally those cards do not survive.) Admiral Fieldhouse accompanied her and afterwards she wrote to him (10 Aug):  

It was a marvellous experience - made wonderful by the superlative and yet modest qualities of the commander and crew. The feeling of comradeship and yet discipline and respect were marvellous to see. We are fortunate indeed in the high personal qualities of our ordinary folk - if ordinary is the word to use: they all seem so able to demonstrate extraordinary qualities when called upon to do so. …

A couple of aspects of this seem noteworthy. Firstly, the somewhat de haut en bas reference in 1984 to “ordinary folk”, although qualified, and the use of a regal “we” to Huth in 1986 suggest that Mrs Thatcher’s feet had lost contact with the ground earlier than indicated by some of the accounts of her despatch in 1990 by her exasperated colleagues. The well-known “We have become a grandmother” was in 1989. Secondly, and more interestingly, it raises the question of how many other Prime Ministers have taken the trouble to visit Polaris or Trident submarines. Why should they? Peter Hennessy devotes a whole chapter of The Secret State Preparing for the Worst 1945-2010 to “The Human Button: Deciders and Deliverers” and makes the point:

… the premier [with the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS)] makes up the first of the pairs that comprise the firing chain from the prime ministerial bunker to the Royal Navy Trident submarine on patrol. (page 358)

The Royal Navy became “Deliverers” at the start of the first Polaris patrol in 1968 since when there have been eight “Decider” Prime Ministers, four Conservative and four Labour. Of the Conservatives we know for certain that Cameron and Thatcher have been on board HM submarines carrying the nuclear deterrent. John Major may have been – he visited the Faslane base in August 1996 and made a speech at the ceremony to mark the decommissioning of the last Polaris submarine, HMS Repulse, by which time the first two Trident submarines were operational. Whether Ted Heath made such a visit in the Polaris period between 1970 and 1974 is uncertain. Margaret Thatcher was Heath’s education secretary so the MTF is making papers from his government available on-line. One is a record of a conversation between Heath and President Pompidou in November 1973 indicating the former’s interest in future nuclear cooperation with France rather than the US (page 8/9). So perhaps not.

Again, it is yet to be established whether or not any of the four Labour PMs (Wilson, Callaghan, Blair and Brown) visited a Polaris or, in the case of the latter two, Trident submarine. Of course, not doing so, or not wanting it to be publicised if they did, does not mean that they failed to take their Decider responsibilities seriously. Hennessy records Lord Guthrie’s comment on his briefing when CDS of Tony Blair as to the Trident force and its capability:

He was quite quiet when he actually heard what was at the country’s disposal. (page 310)

In France, a country which embraces égalité (but is run by élites) and where a Socialist President is unencumbered by a left wing with unilateralist tendencies, the Decider can go to sea early on in his time in office to mix with les gens ordinaires who are ready to do the delivering (François Hollande on Le Terrible in July 2012, below).

UPDATE JULY 2017

Well, don't the years go by! Another French president made a visit to the same submarine (as reported by BBC News, Emmanuel Macron aboard France's Le Terrible nuclear submarine) on 4 July apparently.

Will Theresa May follow in her predecessor's footsteps?  Too much else going on one would have thought.

On age advantage in general elections

There have been 20 elections in the UK since the end of the second world war. A recent post looked at the vote share of the two main parties (Conservative and Labour) in these elections. Another, perhaps less well-grounded, updated the remarkable record of graduates of Oxford university being the winners – now 18 times out of the 20.

Yet another, but not altogether serious, statistic about elections which is easily captured is the age difference between the contenders (Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition), shown for the post-war period in the chart below.

The green shadow indicates where the election generated a change of governing party. 1945, following the wartime coalition led by Winston Churchill, and 2010, leading to a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition led by David Cameron, are assumed to be changes of party. Eight of the 20 elections were then of this kind. In the four elections from 1966 to 1974 the age difference between the contenders was insignificant, Harold Wilson being born in March and Edward Heath in July 1916. For this reason, no conclusions can be drawn about the 1970 and February 1974 changes of government. However, in five of the remaining six elections in which there was a change of party, the successful challenger was younger, on four occasions by 10 years or more. The only older successful challenger was in 1951, when, having failed to displace Clement Attlee in 1950, Churchill returned to the Prime Ministership.

In the 12 continuity elections (ie with no consequent change of governing party), Wilson’s successes against Heath in 1966 and October 1974 are as before insignificant as far as age differences are concerned. Cameron’s success in 2015 against Ed Miliband, who was three years younger, and John Major’s in 1992, when a year and a day older than Neil Kinnock, are probably best regarded as inconclusive as well. In the eight remaining continuity elections, three of the victors had an age advantage of more than 10 years and two were more than five years younger. Three were older, Margaret Thatcher’s defeat of Kinnock in 1987, when more than 15 years older, being easier to understand than Harold Macmillan’s of Hugh Gaitskell in 1959 when more than ten years older.

Is there any underlying significance to all this? It could be that for the electorate to move a party from opposition to government, there has to be an appetite for change and the case for fulfilling it can be made more convincingly by a younger person – Wilson in 1964, Margaret Thatcher in 1979, Tony Blair in 1997, Cameron in 2010.

And what should the two parties’ strategies be for the next election if they were to take age advantage seriously? Labour would, it seems, be more likely to succeed in selling change to the electorate with a much younger leader than Jeremy Corbyn, 68 but now not easily dislodged. It is worth noting that while Cameron at 43 in 2010 was the youngest PM since 1812, Justin Trudeau became Canadian Prime Minister in 2015 at the same age and Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France this year at 39. Labour might well want to wait for the Tories to move first but ought already to be considering that their man or woman should be much more than five years younger than Boris Johnson or Amber Rudd (both currently 53) and significantly younger than Michael Gove (49, going on 60) or Sajid David (47). The Conservatives (on the assumption that Theresa May is no longer PM by then) should aim to nullify any future Labour leader’s age advantage by choosing someone in their early forties. It would also be to the Tory’s advantage to play it long and keep Labour waiting.   Oh, and if they'd been to Oxford ...

Anyone thinking of starting up a new party under, say, David Miliband, should remember that he is 52 next month. How time passes.


Update 27 June 2017 

On 25 June, the Sunday Telegraph carried an article by Ben Riley-Smith, Tory plot to skip 'toxic' generation and install younger face as next leader.

Tory MPs and donors are plotting to “skip a generation” and install a younger MP as their next leader after concluding the front-runners to replace Theresa May are too toxic. A growing number of Conservatives believe that Boris Johnson and David Davis have “had their day” and only younger faces can revive the party’s fortunes.  

… Hopes are now turning to the “golden generation” of Tory MPs first elected in 2010 to win back younger voters who voted for Jeremy Corbyn en masse at the election.  Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, Dominic Raab, the Eurosceptic justice minister, and Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, are all being talked up by colleagues.  Other ministers from the 2010 intake such as Jesse Norman, Brandon Lewis and Jo Johnson - the brother of Boris - are also mentioned as possible contenders.  

Supporters of the plan point to how David Cameron, the last Tory to win the party a majority, was barely known when he joined the leadership race in 2005.  

“If and when this happens, we need Year Zero – a real radical revolution,” said one 2010 MP about a leadership switch.  “We need an equivalent to Ruth Davidson [the Scottish Tory leader] – someone completely counter-intuitive. She is a lesbian kick-boxer who doesn’t fit the mould. When she first got elected she didn’t have much cut through. But because they are new and different it will gather stream [sic].” 

One veteran MP warned that “all the front-runners are contaminated in one way or the other". Another younger MP said: “They’ve had their day and it hasn’t worked. For the current lot – Boris and the rest of them – their time is up.

Raab is 43; Patel, 45; Norman, 55; Lewis and Jo Johnson, both 46.

The Oxford Incumbency continues (just)

It was back in October 2013 that I posted about the very high proportion of elected British Prime Ministers who were Oxford University graduates. The table I produced then is due for an update following the general election on 8 June 2017:

As are some the points which I made:

In 18 of the 20 general elections since 1945, the winning Prime Minister was educated at Oxford.

Of the 11 elected Prime Ministers since 1945, nine went to Oxford; of all 13 PMs since the war, ten went to Oxford.

On only one occasion, 1951, did an Oxford-educated incumbent, Clement Attlee, lose to a non-Oxford person –the “Former Naval Person”, Winston Churchill.

In only one election, 1992, had neither candidate been to Oxford.


Notes 

(1) Harold Macmillan did not graduate from Oxford, his studies having been interrupted by war service.

(2) Known as University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire in Neil Kinnock’s time there.

(3) Cameron, a Conservative, led a coalition from 2010 to 2015.

Donald Trump and Tony Blair February 2017

President’s Press Conference, The White House, 16 February 2017 

... And just while you’re at it, because you mentioned this, Wall Street Journal did a story today that was almost as disgraceful as the failing New York Time’s story, yesterday. And it talked about – these are… front page.

So director of national intelligence just put out, acting a statement, any suggestion that the United States intelligence community, this was just given to us, is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true.  So they took this front page story out of The Wall Street Journal top and they just wrote the story that its not true. And I’ll tell you something, I’ll be honest, because I sort of enjoy this back and forth that I guess I have all my life but I’ve never seen more dishonest media than frankly, the political media. I thought the financial media was much better, much more honest.

But I will say that, I never get phone calls from the media. How did they write a story like that in The Wall Street Journal without asking me or how did they write a story in The New York Times, put it on front page? That was like the story they wrote about the women and me, front page, big massive story. And it was nasty and then they called, they said we never said that, we like Mr. Trump. They called up my office, we like Mr. Trump, we never said that.

And it was totally — they totally misrepresented those very wonderful women, I have to tell you, totally misrepresented. I said give us the retraction. They never gave us a retraction and frankly, I then went on to other things.
...

Tony Blair's Speech on Brexit for Open Britain, London, 17 February 2017 

... There is an effective cartel of media on the right, which built the ramp for pro-Brexit propaganda during the campaign; is now equally savage in its efforts to say it is all going to be ‘great’ and anyone who says otherwise is a traitor or moaner; and who make it very clear to the PM that she has their adulation for exactly as long as she delivers Brexit.

It hugely skews the broadcast coverage. For example, a week ago there was the annual survey of top business bosses of the leading UK companies. Over half said Brexit was already having an adverse effect on their business. And half did not have confidence in the Government negotiating a good deal. It led the FT. It was barely covered elsewhere. The BBC had it as an item of business news. Suppose the survey had come to the opposite conclusion. It would have had at least 4 papers headlining it and would therefore have featured prominently on the broadcasts.
...

Everything is possible, David Miliband

I last posted about David Miliband on 23 May 2015, 18 months ago. I was writing just after a Sunday Times magazine cover story had appeared, Celebrity big brother How David Miliband conquered New York, and was following up earlier posts on the theme of whether Miliband would “do a Boris” and return to Westminster politics. Now, after so many major and unexpected events, there seem to be good reasons to revisit the subject:

The UK general election in May 2015 was won by the Conservatives. Ed Miliband then resigned as leader of the Labour party to be replaced by Jeremy Corbyn who was re-endorsed by the party membership in 2016.

The EU referendum in June 2016 came down in favour of Leave. David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister and was replaced by Teresa May. She appointed Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary.

In November Donald Trump was elected President of the United States defeating Hillary Clinton.

When in 2014 I reviewed Clinton’s book, Hard Choices, I noted that “On David Miliband the adjectives pile up:

David proved to be an invaluable partner. He was young, energetic, smart, creative and attractive with a ready smile. We found our views on how the world was changing remarkably similar.

As Donald Trump might tweet, Very nice! And it wasn’t surprising to read Tom Newton Dunn’s Sun story in April this year that

David Miliband is expecting to be given a top job in the US government by Hillary Clinton if she is elected president in November. The New York-based former Labour Foreign Secretary has told MP friends that the Democrat candidate for the White House wants to make him a foreign envoy. … Mr Miliband [may] have to take up US citizenship to accept the job offer. And it would mean he will have effectively ruled out a return to British politics for good.

So in September, when Miliband offered advice (writing in “a personal capacity”) in the New Statesman on the new challenges for the British left post-Brexit, it couldn’t have been difficult for him to muster the equanimity to observe that:

[Labour] have not been further from power since the 1930s.

and that:

The main charge against Jeremy Corbyn is not just that his strategy is undesirable because it makes the party unelectable. That is only half the story. The real issue is that his strategy makes the party unelectable ¬because it is in many aspects undesirable.

and on Corbyn’s foreign and domestic policies:

There is one other element that is not only undesirable, but disastrous. It is the critique that everyone who disagrees with Jeremy Corbyn is in fact a closet Tory – or “Tory lite”. The US Republicans have a similar problem, with anyone to the left of the hard right called “Rino”, meaning “Republican In Name Only”.

But now the real megafauna are on their way to Washington and any prospects of Clintonian patronage have vaporised. And who should show up in London, as The Times tersely reported on 18 November (right), within a week of the Trump victory, but one David Miliband. Nigel Nelson had offered a more timely report in the Mirror on 13 November, David Miliband set to return to the UK after Trump victory- sparking rumours of Corbyn leadership challenge, The former foreign secretary was reportedly hoping for a position in a Hillary Clinton White House:

David Miliband is ready to come back to Britain now Hillary Clinton will not be US president. And that would allow the former Labour Foreign Secretary to return to British politics for a new leadership challenge against Jeremy Corbyn now being touted by MPs for 2018. A friend of Mr Miliband said: “He was only hanging on over there in the hope Hillary would give him a big job. “Now Donald Trump is president it is more likely he will come home.”

Nelson went on, in sentences that would have been more relevant had Clinton won, to review the jobs that she might have put his way, and his rather gushing opinion of her. At this point it is worth pulling up a quote from the May 2015 post:

"The typical term for the boss of this organisation [the IRC] is 10 years. He made a commitment to stay for seven, which takes him to 2020, but with, effectively, a break option at five.”

So, all Miliband has to do next year is find a safe Labour seat which hasn’t been taken over by extremists (unlike poor Hilary Benn) and which will survive the constituency boundary changes, get adopted instead of Ed Balls (an emerging national treasure on the strength of Strictly Come Dancing), be sufficiently pro-Brexit to defeat UKIP at the general election in 2020 which Labour will probably lose, be elected Labour leader after Corbyn resigns, pushing Keir Starmer and others out of the way, and then lead his party to victory in the 2025 election when he will become PM at the age of 59, almost 60. At least his age would be the least of his problems, the average age of world leaders seems to be on the way up.

We live in a time when the improbable can’t be ruled out and the expected doesn’t happen or, to quote Bernard-Henri Lévy:

If Trump is possible, then everything is possible. Nothing, from now on, is unimaginable.

Like a Brexit-driven UK general election in the first six-months of 2017, Miliband being inserted into a safe seat early next year, possibly assisted by Tony Blair's "new political institute", and a defeated and demoralised Labour party looking for a new leader?

John McTernan’s Trident Case

10 years is a long time in politics

John McTernan was Political Secretary/Director of Political Operations for Tony Blair from 2005 to 2007. Later during the last Labour government, he was Special Adviser to Des Browne, Secretary of State for Defence. Since 2010 he has been involved in Labour politics in Australia (Labor) and Scotland. Of late has been commenting widely on the emerging policies of UK Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. Late last month he took issue with Corbyn’s approach to Trident renewal in a piece for the Telegraph, If Jeremy Corbyn were a proper politician, here's what he'd be saying about Trident. In McTernan’s view:

It is an existential decision – about who we are and at the most extreme end whether we can survive as a nation. It is also one that decides what we can and cannot do for the next 50 years.

And it requires “a proper debate [which] “…is not going to come from Jeremy Corbyn”. As a better model he points to this passage in Tony Blair’s A Journey:

We agreed to the renewal of the independent nuclear deterrent. You might think I would have been certain of that decision, but I hesitated over it. I could see the force of the common sense and practical argument against Trident, yet in the final analysis I thought giving it up too big a downgrading of our status as a nation, and in an uncertain world, too big a risk for our defence. I did not think this was a ‘tough on defence’ versus ‘weak or pacifist’ issue at all. On simple, pragmatic grounds, there was a case either way. The expense is huge, and the utility in a post-Cold War world is less in terms of deterrence, and non-existence in terms of military use. Spend the money on more helicopters, airlift and anti-terror equipment? Not a daft notion. In the situations British forces would likely be called upon to fight, it was pretty clear what mattered most. It's true that it is frankly inconceivable we would use our nuclear deterrent alone, without the US – and let us hope a situation in which the US is even threatening us never arises – but it’s a big step to put that beyond your capability as a country. (Note 1)

McTernan goes on to describe how a case against Trident should be made:

… it needs to be located in a muscular defence policy. The reality of a non-nuclear Britain has to be planned for. That means realistic commitments to alternative defence sending – and not the politically lazy and untrue notion of pretending that you can switch defence to social spending. It also means an explicit commitment to sheltering behind the US deterrent within Nato – not taking the intellectually lazy option, in this case of pretending that nuclear weapons are immoral. And, it means committing to deeper bilateral defence relations with France, including a nuclear weapons treaty that would mean the UK had a backup to the US in case of the triumph of US nativism.

McTernan’s opinions are usually well-founded but on this occasion I find his arguments less than convincing. Firstly, he fails to point out that A Journey was published in 2010 and that Blair was describing policies being debated in the closing months of 2006, immediately before the publication of the White Paper Cm6994, The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent. At that time “the utility [of Trident] in a post-Cold War world” may have seemed “less in terms of deterrence”, but the last nine years have seen a considerable modernisation of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Nuclear notebook provides regular overviews of Russian nuclear forces, and the 2015 survey by Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris states that:

The broad modernization reflects the Putin government’s conviction that nuclear forces, in particular strategic nuclear forces, are indispensable for Russia’s security and status as a great power. Maintaining parity with the United States is a strong motivation for this modernization, but the development of multiple versions of the same missiles indicates the strong influence of Russia’s military-industrial complex on nuclear planning.

and

Overall, the nuclear modernization effort will present Russia and the international arms control community with new challenges. Unless a new arms control reduction agreement is reached in the near future, the shrinking of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal that has characterized the past two decades will likely come to an end …

They go on to give details of the Russian ICBM, SSBN/SLBM and heavy bomber programmes to replace nuclear systems from the Cold War period and which have been put in hand within the limitations of New START in the years since Cm6994.

Secondly, the case against Trident which McTernan thinks should (or could) be made has some weaknesses. He describes “pretending that nuclear weapons are immoral” as a lazy option. Surely so would be “sheltering behind the US deterrent within Nato” when, as no doubt McTernan is well aware, Blair’s letter to President Bush of 7 December 2006 (extract below) makes it clear that the UK assigns Trident to NATO?

The UK’s giving up Trident would be to transfer part of the NATO burden of providing deterrence – McTernan does not dispute its necessity – to the US. He also seems to believe that, post-Trident, the UK would be able to enter into a nuclear weapons treaty with France which would provide “a backup”. France would probably see themselves as being in a very strong negotiating position were such an arrangement to be requested. McTernan sees this as a safeguard against “US nativism” – presumably he means an isolationist US turning its back on NATO. Oddly, he doesn’t raise the possibility of such a US government, unlikely though it is, withdrawing support from UK Trident. Amusingly, one of the intriguing aspects of Michel Houellebecq’s recent novel Submission was its exploration (frustratingly not sustained) of French nativism. And where would that possibility, again unlikely, leave us?

Note 1. This appears on pages 635/636 of A Journey. McTernan has replaced “non-existent” with “non-existence”.


ADDENDUM 3 FEBRUARY

Anyone interested enough to read this far might like to look at the speech US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter gave to the Economic Club of Washington DC on 2 February about the five challenges facing his budget. Two extracts:

Two of these challenges reflect a return to great power of competition. First is in Europe, where we're taking a strong and balanced approach to deter Russian aggression, and we haven't had to worry about this for 25 years. While I wish it were otherwise, now we do.

Another near-term investment in the budget is how we are reinforcing our posture in Europe to support our NATO allies in the face of Russia's aggression. In Pentagon parlance, this is called the European Reassurance Initiative and after requesting about $800 million for last year, this year we're more than quadrupling it for a total of $3.4 billion in 2017. That will fund a lot of things: more rotational U.S. forces in Europe, more training and exercising with our allies, more preposition and war-fighting gear and infrastructure improvements to support all this. And when combined with U.S. forces already in and assigned to Europe -- which are also substantial -- all of this together by the end of 2017 will let us rapidly form a highly capable combined arms ground force that can respond across that theater, if necessary.

Former Prime Ministers – some statistics

What uncertain times these are. In the Independent on Sunday on 18 January, Iain Dale, political commentator and former Conservative politician, provided his prediction of the outcome of the May general election (his website is the primary source). It was based on a painstaking consideration of the circumstances of each of the 650 constituencies in the UK parliament, after drawing together whatever local knowledge, polling evidence and so on that he could find. This approach had served Dale well “when I got the European election results bang on and made the most accurate predictions in Cameron’s Cabinet reshuffle”. On the same day in the Sunday Times, Peter Kellner, political commentator, president of the pollster YouGov and husband of a Labour politician provided his forecast (now on YouGov). Their data is in the table below, my additions in italics:

Of course, both men may choose to revise their forecasts in the coming weeks and who knows how robust such predictions would be in the event of, say, a terrorist outrage days before the election. But in both neither of the two main parties is expected to achieve an overall majority, which would suggest that some form of coalition is likely. However, according to Kellner, David Cameron will be leader of the largest party whereas Dale implies that  Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, will be Prime Minister and heading the coalition.

So we may have four former Prime Ministers, with Cameron joining John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Or perhaps there will still be three at the end of May. This set me thinking about the number of ex-PMs over the years, hence the chart on the left from 1870 to the current day.



It turns out that for most of the last 100 years, the presence of three or four ex-PMs has been the norm. There only being one, as was mostly the case from 1945-55, was unusual. Only in Gladstone’s final administration was there none, for four years following Disraeli’s death in 1881.  Prime Ministers tend to be long-lived – only one born since 1800 died under 70, Bonar Law, who died soon after leaving office in 1923. The only PM to die in office was Campbell-Bannerman in 1908 at the age of 71.



The mean age at death of the 21 deceased PMs born since 1800 has been just over 81 years, but for the five born and deceased since 1900, just over 88. The latter include one woman, Margaret Thatcher, who died at 87, bringing the average down, contrary to actuarial expectation. Presumably to get the job at all requires a good constitution, but comparison should be made with the life expectancy of upper middle class males (mostly) over 40, not males in general at birth.

On average PMs have lived for 14.8 years after leaving office for the last time (Wilson, Churchill, and Baldwin are among those who returned to office). This becomes 17.2 years if Campbell-Bannerman (see above) and Chamberlain and Bonar Law, who both died within six months of leaving office, are excluded. (The arrows are for Major, above Blair, both to the left of Brown, all on-going of course).

The longest lived was Rosebery – more correctly Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, probably the most interesting PM statistically. At 45 he was the youngest person to become PM until Blair and later Cameron. His period in office was only 15 months and his estate is thought to have been the largest –so far. The younger they enter office, as has increasingly been the case, the younger PMs will be when they leave:

As far as the next election is concerned, there would be nothing surprising about either outcome as PM in terms of the consequent number of ex-PMs.  However, it seems very likely that the number will go up over the decades ahead. As the table below shows, despite the impression of premierships having become longer, over successive three decade periods, there have been about the same number of office-holders:

However, if the leaving PMs are getting younger and they live to about 90, there will, before long – probably the late 2020s, be six or even seven ex-PMs to be invited to lunch or dinner with the sovereign!

NOTES 

1. Dates of birth, death and office are from Wikipedia.
2. The “quick and dirty” method for dates before 1900 in Excel was used.
3. Photograph at top, 1985: PM Thatcher, ex-PMs Callaghan, Douglas Home, Macmillan, Wilson, Heath (left to right).
4. Second photograph, 2012: PM Cameron, ex-PMs Major, Blair, Brown (left to right), Thatcher was too ill to attend.
5.  Any errors will be corrected if provided as comments.

The Economist and Tony Blair

While I was writing the New Year’s Day post here about other people’s predictions over the previous 12 months, I found I needed to add an extra one from Tony Blair. It had appeared in The Economist (dated 3 January 2015 but on the streets by the end of 2014) and had been heralded by a tweet on 30 December from the magazine’s public policy and education editor, Anne McElvoy:

Blair’s office next day tweeted that his “remarks had been mis-interpreted”. The story caused a bit of a flurry
in the mainstream media but was forgotten by the start of the New Year, as was, as far as I can tell, the linkage between this article and a three-page feature, The Loneliness of Tony Blair, in the previous edition of The Economist on 20 December, their Christmas double issue. Sub-headed Celebrated abroad and reviled at home, the former prime minister struggles to fulfil his ambitions and continuing in the same vein, the writer wasn’t much swayed by considerations of seasonal goodwill (right), as this passage reveals:

… Earlier this year, in an episode that brought joy to the British press, Rupert Murdoch ended his longstanding relationship with the former prime minister over suspicions that he had had an affair with Wendi Deng, then Mr Murdoch's wife. According to sources at NewsCorp, Mr Murdoch pressed the "mute" button during a confrontational phone call, informed colleagues that he was getting "politicians' answers" to his questions, and has never spoken to Mr Blair (who is godfather to one of the couple's children) since. 

Mr Blair roundly denies any impropriety. Asked whether he was (at least) careless about his reputation, he says calmly that it is "not something I will ever talk about-I haven't and I won't", and then bangs his coffee cup so loudly into its saucer that it spills and everyone in the room jumps. But did he find himself in a tangle over his friendship with Ms Deng? A large, dark pool of sweat has suddenly appeared under his armpit, spreading across an expensive blue shirt.

As is The Economist’s practice, there was no by-line. However, Anne McElvoy was the author of a Mail on Sunday report on 21 December, given the succinct title, Why I asked Tony Blair the truth about him and Wendi Murdoch, by journalist who made former Prime Minister sweat in interview for The Economist magazine, in which she explained that she had “interviewed him twice recently on a wide range of subjects for The Economist”. Curiously, the MoS piece was rather more sympathetic to Blair than The Economist’s – compare the conclusions, MoS first:

I suspect that, for all the global glamour, commercial success and boundless self-belief, the most successful ex-Labour leader would like more credit and esteem at home. There is a frustration, even a loneliness about him, which cannot be dealt with by accumulating ever more clients and good causes. Next year, the Chilcot Inquiry will be critical of his handling of the Iraq War – but will also present him with a chance to talk about his mistakes as well as his achievements. He does not need to recant on his world-view, but he should show more openness about his failings and some regret for them. Most of all, Mr Blair needs to deal with a weakness which has come to haunt him in public and private life – he needs to talk straight.

Whereas in The Economist:

Because it is so important to Mr Blair to be right, he cannot admit to failings over the war in Iraq. Yet until he does so, people will continue to mistrust him. That is a shame, for his mission to fight against fundamentalism needs all the resources and energy it can get. He has considerable talents, which he is prepared to devote to his cause … Yet the main asset that any former politician has is moral sway, and because Mr Blair has forfeited so much trust, he has far less credibility than he should have. Some contrition or regret among those ironclad certainties would serve him and his cause better. The late Mo Mowlam, an outspoken minister in the Blair government, was on to something when she observed early in his reign that "the trouble with Tony is that he "thinks he's fucking Jesus." Mr Blair has plenty of the Messiah's self-belief and sense of mission. He could do with a dash of his humility as well.

Again, the MoS’s opening was:

Tony Blair is one of the great alpha politicians this country has produced: a conviction politician who is not afraid to take on big and contentious issues and does not mind a challenge. Yet he remains a puzzle – even to those of us sympathetic to his deft repositioning of the Labour Party, his reformist outlook on public services and his now-unfashionable commitment to Britain’s role in some of the most difficult issues the world faces: notably the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its remedies.

I used to read The Economist regularly, but now find a print copy at £5 off-puttingly expensive . Their subscriptions are touted as offering big savings, but in terms of copies properly read, allowing for holidays and such and the occasional dull issue, are unlikely in real terms to be that much cheaper. The price of a digital only subscription seems far too high given the marginal cost of its provision. But it might not just be a question of economics. There are few, if any, areas of human knowledge that The Economist isn’t prepared to expound on in a confident style. But on those occasions when the subject was something I actually had some expertise in, I didn’t always find it particularly convincing or quite as well-informed as it would like its readership to think. In this ever more complex world where most of those who can afford to read The Economist are likely to be one kind of knowledge worker or another, perhaps “a dash of humility” would be appropriate.

There were rumours last year that Pearson’s 50% stake in the Economist Group is going to be put up for sale, for example in the Daily Mail on 28 October which also pointed out that “The Economist's annual report shows revenues and profits have been falling since 2012.” Roy Greenslade in the Guardian was sceptical. Since then, The Economist’s chief editor, John Micklethwait, has been recruited by Bloomberg News, his replacement to be announced shortly. I would be surprised if the new editor (or any new owner of the Pearson stake) turns out to be a Blair admirer.

New Year Predictions 2015

At the start of the year I post not my predictions but some of those which people have come out with in the previous 12 months (January 2014’s are here). This time we are weeks from the UK 2015 election, the outcome of which is currently looking uncertain. One of the first people to point out just how uncertain was the pollster, Peter Kellner, in a post on the YouGov website, Ukip, the SNP and the risks of parliamentary paralysis. He explained:

In recent months it has looked unlikely that either Labour or the Conservatives would win an overall majority next year. There is now a real chance that neither will have a secure majority, even in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. 

… In order for us to be certain that a viable two-party coalition with the Lib Dems is available to at least one of the two main parties, the number of Lib Dem MPs must exceed the total of the other minority parties. 

… the decline in Lib Dem support could leave them with fewer MPs than the combined ranks of the ‘other’ minority party MPs. If that happens there is a real possibility that the parliamentary politics of the House of Commons will be exceedingly messy.

Tony Blair, according to the Daily Telegraph on 25 October, thought otherwise:

The Conservatives will win the next general election because of Ed Miliband’s failure to connect with voters, Tony Blair has said. David Cameron will remain in power next year because Labour has not persuaded Britain it is ready to govern, the former Labour prime minister has apparently told friends. Mr Blair’s verdict on Mr Miliband follows criticism of the Labour leader’s performance from several MPs and will increase concern within the party about his ability to win in May. Mr Blair’s apparent prediction was made in a private conversation with long-standing political allies earlier this month. The Telegraph has been given an account of that conversation by one person who was present. 

“The Conservatives will be the next government because Labour has failed to make a good case for itself. That is what Tony thinks,” the person said. “He does not think that Miliband can beat Cameron.”

Just after the Telegraph had gone to print on 24 October, the Office of Tony Blair tweeted a denial:

And then on 30 December, it was déjà vu all over again. Anne McElvoy tweeted (from Islington, where else?) to puff a piece about to appear in The Economist (incidentally, why does the full URL end “-don’t-go”?):

The key words:

In an interview with The Economist, Mr Blair says that he fears that the next election, due to take place in May 2015, could be a rerun of those before his ascent to the leadership, which regularly ended in disaster for his party. The result in 2015, he quips, could well be an election “in which a traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result”. Asked if he means a Tory win, Mr Blair confirms: “Yes, that is what happens.”

Next day, surprise, surprise, the Office of Tony Blair tweeted a denial:

TB’s prediction methodology: heads he wins, tails he doesn’t lose, one might think. But earlier in the month the Independent on Sunday had run a story, Tony Blair wants Chuka Umunna to be the next Labour leader, which, as far as I can tell, went undenied:

Tony Blair is backing Chuka Umunna to be the next Labour leader, the former prime minister's friends have revealed, in an intervention that will set the battle for succession alight. Several Labour frontbenchers are preparing their leadership campaigns in the event that Ed Miliband fails to secure victory next May. But being anointed by the party's most successful leader could be either a blessing or a curse for Mr Umunna, the shadow Business Secretary, given how far Mr Blair's popularity in the wider Labour movement has fallen.

It would hardly be worth expressing an opinion to “friends” unless, of course, he thought the Labour leadership was going to be an issue in 2015. But Blair has other things on his mind. At the Aspen Ideas Festival in June, he was interviewed by “Yahoo’s Global News Anchor”, Katie Couric, and warned that returning British jihadists ‘could use Kenya terror tactics’ to disrupt UK.

And things could be worse. In October George W Bush’s former Vice President, Dick Cheney, was interviewed by Bill Kristol and warned:

… we’re in a very dangerous period. I think it’s more threatening than the period before 9/11. I think 9/11 will turn out to be not nearly as bad as the next mass casualty attack against the United States, which if and when it comes will be something far more deadlier than airline tickets and box cutters.

Happy New Year.

How are the Red Princes and Princesses also rising?

It was almost two years ago that a post appeared here about the Red Princes and Princesses – the children of prominent Labour politicians who were thought likely to follow in their parental footsteps ("the son also rises"). A good article on the subject, What Labour’s Red Princes tell us about Britain, by Sophie McBain appeared in the New Statesman in June. She concluded:

… if you felt like being kind, you could say that Labour’s Red Princes have benefited from “high social capital”, but perhaps you would prefer the term “nepotism”. The children of MPs enter politics with an understanding of the Westminster system, as well as ready-made political connections and influential backers, which all help if you are looking for a parachute into a winnable seat. In this way, at least, Labour reflects the society it aspires to represent: the UK has the lowest level of social mobility in the developed world. 

… How does a party of political princelings and Westminster insiders convince anyone it can represent the working classes? …

With just over seven months to go before the election on 7 May 2015*, I thought it would be interesting to find out how they (and some other notables’ offspring) are getting on in the constituencies reported to be of interest to them. I expect that now that the Scottish referendum is over and an influx of Scottish Labour MPs seeking English seats has been averted, more will be learnt.

I will add/amend as information becomes available, but so far, and in alphabetical order:

EMILY BENN 
Child of: Benn dynasty
Age*: 25
Constituency: Croydon South - Majority in 2010: 5818 (Con, 28%)
Status: PPC (Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, ie will be Labour candidate in 2015)

STEPHEN BENN 
Child of: late Tony Benn
Age*: 63
Constituency: Lords hereditary member
Source: Daily Mail 8 April 2014

EUAN BLAIR

Child of: Tony Blair

Age*: 31

Constituency:    Coventry North West - Majority in 2010: 6288 (Lab, 13%)

and                   Bootle (Merseyside) - Majority in 2010: 21181 (Lab, 51%)

Status: ?

JOE DROMEY

Child of: Jack Dromey and Harriet Harman

Age*: 31/32

Constituency: Lewisham Deptford - Majority in 2010: 12499 (Lab, 30%)

Status: interest denied
Source: Daily Telegraph blogs 3 September 2013

GEORGIA GOULD

Child of: Late Philip Gould and Lady Gould (Gail Rebuck)

Age*: 27

Constituency: Erith & Thamesmead - Majority in 2010: 5703 (Lab, 13%)

Status: Failed to become PPC in 2010

STEPHEN KINNOCK

Child of: Neil and Gladys Kinnock (Lord Kinnock and Baroness Kinnock)

Age*: 45

Constituency: Aberavon - Majority in 2010: 11039 (Lab, 36%)

Status: PPC

SUSAN MITCHELL

Child of: Austin Mitchell

Age*: 50s?

Constituency: Dulwich & W Norwood - Majority in 2010: 9365 (Lab, 19%)

Status: Withdrew from PPC

Source: London Evening Standard 24 February2014

DAVID PRESCOTT

Child of: Lord Prescott (John Prescott)

Age*: 44

Constituency: Hull East - Majority in 2010: 8597 (Lab, 25%)

Status: Failed to become PPC

Constituency: Greenwich & Woolwich - Majority in 2010: 10153 (Lab, 25%)

Status: Failed to become PPC

Source: Parliament Street 15 April2014 

WILL STRAW

Child of: Jack Straw

Age*: 34

Constituency: Rossendale & Darwen - Majority in 2010: 4493 (Con, 9%)

Status: PPC

* Age on 7 May 2015

Tony Blair’s Bloomberg Speech

On 23 April Tony Blair gave a speech, Why the Middle East Matters, at Bloomberg HQ, London. It was widely reported and its essence can be found in these extracts:

What is presently happening [in the Middle East], still represents the biggest threat to global security of the early 21st C. The region, including the wider area outside its conventional boundary – Pakistan, Afghanistan to the east and North Africa to the west – is in turmoil with no end in sight to the upheaval and any number of potential outcomes from the mildly optimistic to catastrophe.

later:

At the root of the crisis lies a radicalised and politicised view of Islam, an ideology that distorts and warps Islam’s true message. … When we consider the defining challenges of our time, surely [religious extremism] should be up there along with the challenge of the environment or economic instability.

and:

On this issue also, there is a complete identity of interest between East and West. China and Russia have exactly the same desire to defeat this ideology as do the USA and Europe.

But earlier, the first of his “four reasons why the Middle East remains of central importance and cannot be relegated to the second order” was that:

First and most obviously, it is still where a large part of the world’s energy supplies are generated, and whatever the long term implications of the USA energy revolution, the world’s dependence on the Middle East is not going to disappear any time soon. In any event, it has a determining effect on the price of oil; and thus on the stability and working of the global economy.

Because Russia has a major dependency on the price of oil remaining near current levels and would no doubt prefer it to be higher, is there really a “complete identity of interest”?

Beware the Ides of March, Ed

Benedict Brogan has been in Brighton for the Labour Party Conference and today his always informative Morning Briefing  concentrated on Ed Miliband’s speech. As usual the Briefing ended with links to Best Comment in the Daily Telegraph and “the rest”, with the final link being to a piece by Mary Ann Sieghart.  This was not in the mainstream media but posted on the Social Market Foundation’s Market Square, Will Ed Miliband still be Labour leader next spring? Sieghart, it seems, was also in Brighton, and she began:

The sun’s been shining in Brighton, Labour is ahead in the polls, new policies are at last being produced, so this should have been a good week for Ed Miliband. Instead, I found myself being collared by a Shadow Cabinet minister, determined to explain to me how the Labour leader could be ousted as early as next spring. If Labour is behind the Tories in the polls by then – which could easily happen as the economy recovers – my informant predicts an uprising by Labour MPs against Miliband. It doesn’t matter how arcane the rules are for ousting a Labour leader; if he loses the confidence of, say, 100 MPs, he’ll have to go.

and ended:

It would be a desperate, and pretty unfair, move to get rid of Miliband before he has even faced the electorate. But don’t underestimate the fury of MPs fearing the loss of their seats. The Tories did it to Iain Duncan Smith in 2003, who also looked out of his depth. Labour has traditionally been more charitable towards unpopular leaders, but my sense is that the parliamentary party’s patience is waning. If Ed Miliband decides to take a dip this gloriously sunny afternoon, his colleagues may conclude he is not waving, but drowning.

She didn’t think much of Miliband’s speech,  scoffing “that it’s not possible to describe his supporters as Milibandites. What, after all, would a Milibandite believe?” and she went on:

It was easy to define a Thatcherite as someone who wanted to take the state out of the economy, restore the right of managers to manage, and reward the aspirational classes. A Blairite was someone who took the side of the consumers of public services, not the producers, and was happy to allow market mechanisms in, as long as they made the services better. A Milibandite seems able only to share the voters’ pain – “squeezed middle”, “falling living standards” – but not to have an ideological template that prescribes treatment as well as diagnosing the illness.

Anyone who is trying to locate Sieghart in these three groupings might want to take a look at a post here last year.

Sieghart's SMF Market Square post was described as being by a “Guest”, although she is actually Chair of the SMF Board. There is also a SMF Policy Advisory Board which includes, by my reckoning, three members of the Shadow Cabinet.

The Prescience of Mr Powell

As yet the consequences of the use of sarin nerve gas as a weapon against civilians in Syria are far from clear. For the present, it looks as though the UK will not be involved in any punitive attack by the Western powers. In the days since the recall of the House of Commons and the vote by MPs on 29 August which forced the government to drop its plans to participate, there has been extensive media comment. Much of it is in the “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” vein, but not all. In an article in the Daily Mail on 31 August, A savage defeat for Cameron... and he brought it on himself, Max Hastings, avoided coming down clearly on the side of “Don’t”:

… the only proper test of a policy for Syria is not whether it will make David Cameron feel better about himself, but whether it will assuage the plight of the Syrian people. On this measure, the Government’s current ‘short, sharp shock’ proposal fails comprehensively.

Moreover,

Once the first cruise missile lands on Syria, we would have been in the struggle up to our necks. Cameron claimed that any strike would only be a little one, but you cannot do a little bit of military intervention. Once the United States and its allies start shooting at the Assad government, they are committed to regime change, and it is a gross deceit to pretend otherwise.

What worried Hastings was the UK’s longer-term position:

… in my view there’s no doubt the Prime Minister has made a colossal fool of himself, on a matter of the utmost gravity – that of war and peace. Almost the worst part of the fiasco is that one day we shall need to deploy our shrunken armed forces against a real threat from a real foreign enemy. And because our leaders have so often deceived us in the past, crying wolf amid their own hubristic delusions and pretensions, the British people will not believe them. That will indeed be a tragic day, and Mr Cameron has followed Blair in bringing it upon us.

But it was this passage which interested me most:

A couple of months ago, I was due to meet a British general for a routine chat when I received an embarrassed email from him, saying that all such meetings must now be approved by the Defence Secretary’s office. This had been refused. I wrote first to Philip Hammond, and then to David Cameron, asking why they were seeking to kill the sort of private dialogue with the armed forces that I have had for more than 40 years. Both the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary wrote back, defending their gagging decision. They said that there has been far too much military leaking to the media, and they are determined that this must stop. This sort of clumsy control-freakery derives in part, of course, from the fact that our leaders know that our professional soldiers are contemptuous of their antics on security policy generally, and Syria in particular.

It reminded me of something I had posted in January 2011, but which took almost the opposite point of view, quoted from Jonathan Powell’s The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World, published in 2010 (Powell was Tony Blair’s Downing Street Chief of Staff from 1997 to 2007 and his book, he said, was not a memoir but combined a present day evaluation of the applicability of Machiavelli’s maxims, lessons on leadership and power based on his experience in Number 10 and supporting anecdotes for the use of future historians):

... When Mike Jackson retired as chief of the general staff in August 2006, the MoD sent over to No 10 the CV of his proposed successor, asking for the prime minister's agreement. Tony's foreign policy and defence adviser Nigel Sheinwald came to see me and we agreed that it wasn't worth consulting Tony about such a trivial subject, and Nigel wrote back to the MoD agreeing to the appointment on the basis of Mike Jackson’s recommendation. A few months later we faced a serious problem with the new chief, Richard Dannatt, when he chose to attack the government through the pages of the Daily Mail while we were in St Andrews engaged in crucial Northern Ireland peace talks. Tony complained about him to me, and I, forgetting what had happened earlier, said that it was his fault as he had appointed him. He denied that he had and said he had never been consulted. I went back to the files and discovered that he was right and had to confess to Tony. (pages 89, 90)

Powell returns to this incident later in the book:

General Dannatt's attack on the deployment of British forces in Iraq caught us completely unawares in 2006. Tony and I were engaged in delicate Northern Ireland negotiations in St Andrews. When we were told the news of the interview he had given to the Mail, saying that the presence of British forces in Iraq made things worse and they should get out soon, we couldn't get hold of anyone. Des Browne, who had succeeded John Reid as Defence Secretary, was in a plane on his way up to Scotland. The Chief of the Defence Staff was in Australia and unreachable; the Vice Chief was giving a lecture and couldn't be disturbed. And Dannatt himself was refusing to return calls. We thought for a moment about sacking him but concluded that that would just make him into a martyr. His comments certainly didn't help our troops in Basra; Muqtada al-Sadr's JAM militia leaders celebrated, claiming that his comments proved that their efforts were working and that they should redouble their attacks on British forces. We immediately received complaints from the NATO Secretary General, the Americans, Australians and other countries with forces serving in Iraq. Although some of the responses in the military internet chat rooms were favourable, his fellow chiefs were furious with him. In the aftermath, we arranged for Tony to have a sandwich lunch with the service chiefs in Jock Stirrup's office at the MoD. Dannatt insisted on talking, and after a few minutes it was quite clear to me that he was unsuited to his job. Tony explained to those present that politicians would not support maintaining a first-division army if they were caused too much political pain by serving generals speaking out against their mission. It was always easier for politicians not to risk soldiers' lives". But I fear he was too subtle for Dannatt, who was divinely convinced of his own rightness. (pages 269, 270)

Perhaps Cameron and Hammond aren’t being quite so foolish as Hastings seems to think. Nor was the development which peeved Hastings entirely unheralded. During the Libyan operations in 2011, Cameron was quoted as saying about the military chiefs "There are moments when I wake up and read the newspapers and think: 'I tell you what, you do the fighting and I'll do the talking'." But on revisiting Powell’s book, it was the next paragraph which caught my eye:

The sort of surprise attack that Dannatt launched will make political leaders think twice if military action is proposed in future, certainly if the military engagement is likely to be sustained over a year or rnore. Our armed forces will no longer be deployed so regularly and will lose their cutting edge. We will gradually become more like Germany and other Continental countries, unable to put our armed forces in harm's way. That is a choice, but one we should make consciously and not just stumble into it. It would be another step towards losing the ability to control our destiny as a country, a far more important one than sharing our sovereignty in NATO or the EU. (page 270)

The UK seems to be in danger of stumbling in the direction Powell so presciently identified three years ago (or possibly four, when actually writing it). So far I haven’t come across any comments by him on the situation the coalition government now finds itself in.

Ages at the Audience

Peter Morgan’s play The Audience has ended its first theatre run in London. Its subject:

For sixty years Elizabeth II has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace – a meeting like no other in British public life – it is private. Both parties have an unspoken agreement never to repeat what is said. Not even to their spouses. The Audience breaks this contract of silence – and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional – sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive. From young mother to grandmother, these private audiences chart the arc of the second Elizabethan Age. Politicians come and go through the revolving door of electoral politics, while she remains constant, waiting to welcome her next Prime Minister.

In April 2013 Helen Mirren was awarded best actress at the Laurence Olivier Awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Audience. After the 2006 film, The Queen, also scripted by Morgan, she received numerous awards for playing the same part.

I didn’t see the play, but can’t help thinking that the key word in the description above is “imagines”. The confidentiality of these meetings allows a dramatist considerable scope in providing an evening’s entertainment, but one has to wonder if the audience will go home much the wiser. As far as I know, British Prime Ministers’ memoirs all conform to the rules of omertà on the subject. For example, almost at the start of The Downing Street Years, Mrs Thatcher tells her readers:

The Audience at which one receives the Queen's authority to form a government comes to most prime ministers only once in a lifetime. The authority is unbroken when a sitting prime minister wins an .election, and so it never had to be renewed throughout the years I was in office. All audiences with the Queen take place in strict confidence - a confidentiality which is vital to the working of both government and constitution. I was to have such audiences with Her Majesty once a week, usually on a Tuesday, when she was in London and sometimes elsewhere when the royal family were at Windsor or Balmoral.  

Perhaps it is permissible to make just two points about these meetings. Anyone who imagines that they are a mere formality or confined to social niceties is quite wrong; they are quietly businesslike and Her Majesty brings to bear a formidable grasp of current issues and breadth of experience. And, although the press could not resist the temptation to suggest disputes between the Palace and Downing Street, especially on Commonwealth affairs, I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the government absolutely correct.  

Of course, under the circumstances, stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up. In general, more nonsense was written about the so-called 'feminine factor' during my time in office than about almost anything else. I was always asked how it felt to be a woman prime minister. I would reply: 'I don't know: I've never experienced the alternative.''  

After the audience, Sir Philip Moore, the Queen's Secretary, took me to his office down what are called 'the Prime Minister's stairs'. … (pages 17,18)

18 years later, one of Thatcher’s successors had his first audience:

… I practically fell upon the Queen's hands, not so much brushing as enveloping them. I recovered sufficiently to find myself sitting opposite her. I had met her before, of course, but this was different. It was my first audience. There is much to say about the Queen. At this encounter, I noticed two things: she was quite shy, strangely so for someone of her experience and position; and at the same time, direct. I don’t mean rude or insensitive, just direct. 'You are my tenth prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born.' We talked for a time, not exactly small talk but general guff about the government programme, the conversation somewhat stilted. Then Cherie was brought in to pay her respects … (Tony Blair, A Journey, page 14)

He notes at the time of his departure from office a decade later, the Queen’s being “as ever, very gracious” (page 662).

In the three volumes of Alastair Campbell’s diaries covering his years in Number 10 working for Blair, the ‘audience’ subject is indexed only in Volume 3, Power and Responsibility 1999-2001, with just the one entry of any real interest:

21 March 2001  

… I tried to pick his [Blair’s] brains on whether the Queen was a hundred per cent happy at the way Prince Charles was piling in [on the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic, see 5 March entry]. He was unbelievably discreet though, occasionally told the odd funny story about their meetings, but even with me, rarely let slip anything of substance from their discussions.

It seems to me that the only thing that most of us can be sure of about these audiences is the identities of the participants and their ages. What would that tell us? Firstly, that it takes some effort to pull the information together, and my first attempt at presenting it led to the chart below. This shows the ages of Sovereigns and Prime Ministers since the start of Queen Victoria’s reign in 1837.

Some points of interest across this period are:

1. Victoria was the youngest Sovereign, just over 18 at succession.
2. Elizabeth is the oldest, currently 87.
3. The oldest PM in office was Gladstone, 84 when he left in 1894.
4. The youngest PM in office was Cameron in 2010, at 43.
5. Between 1935 and 1937, Baldwin was PM to three different Kings. Data visualisation is fashionable, so it seems worth reflecting on the insignificance rendered to the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 by this particular form of graphical presentation.
Also, 6. Until the 1960s, PMs were nearly all over 50 and most were over 60. There has, however, been a downward trend in their ages since Churchill left office in 1955. It seems unlikely that this trend will continue further, so it will either reverse, or PMs from now on will be in their 40s.

Secondly, the same data can be presented in a different fashion (left) to show the age difference between Sovereign and PM over the same period, but with time running down the page. To be of much significance in relationships between adults, their age difference probably has to be large enough for them to be conscious of belonging to different generations - the remarks Blair quotes seem to have the subtext: “I am old enough to be your mother”. In modern advanced societies (or in the higher social strata of poorer ones) generations are usually taken as being 25 to 30 years apart. So once an age difference between adults is more than 15 years, it might begin to affect the view they take of each other. The blue-grey bands on the chart are set to indicate 17.5 to 20 year differences. Some further points of interest emerge:

7. The biggest age difference, over 51 years, between Sovereign and PM was that between Elizabeth and Churchill from 1952 to 1955.
8. The Sovereign and PM closest in age were Elizabeth and Mrs Thatcher, the latter being six months older.
9. The biggest age difference between a Sovereign and a younger PM is that at present, 40 years.
Also, 10. From 1870 to 1936, the Sovereigns and PMs were close enough in age to be regarded as being of the same generation (except during the Rosebury administration of 1894/5). This applied again between 1964 and 1997 but not since.

Finally, what might the situation be in 2017? More confidently than for most predictions, it can be assumed that the Sovereign is likely to be as at present or Charles III or William V. But the PM? If the coalition’s economic policies turn out to be a success and the Conservatives win the next election, Cameron could still be PM or could have stood down. In the latter case, the bookies’ current favourite as next Tory leader is Theresa May. My view, not that I’ve bet on it, is that in those circumstances George Osborne would be well-placed to take the credit for the recovery and the leadership. However, the bookies’ favourite as next PM is Ed Miliband. For the age differences under these scenarios, see the Table below and draw the obvious conclusions about generational age differences, if you think these matter.

As for The Audience, Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph thought it was magnificent and “persuasive”, while in the Observer, Susannah Clapp thought “Morgan's very entertaining play is a skinny thing, a string of sketches dependent on high-grade mimicry”. Robert Hardman, maker of the ITV documentary Our Queen, probably provided in the Daily Mail one of the best-informed reviews and concluded:

… what the Queen genuinely thinks of her Prime Ministers will be sheer guesswork for a long time to come until future historians are one day granted access to the diaries and papers of a sovereign who has listened to them all — and never leaked a thing.

which rather assumes that there will be such access.


NOTES

1. The dates of reigns, of prime ministerships and of birth come from Wikipedia.
2. On a few occasions in the Victorian period the country had to manage without a PM for a day or two – the rise of the British Empire doesn’t seem to have been interrupted. The gaps are not shown. 3. The age differences are those on 1 July each year – regrettably this restriction excludes the Russell administration of October 1885 to June 1886. Edward VIII’s brief reign is captured.
4. I hope that the inevitable errors are not significant. I am happy to correct any that are. The way Excel was used to handle dates was described in a previous post. The graphics were produced using PowerPoint and the alignments are not always exact.


UPDATE 19 DECEMBER 2013

According to an article by Chris Hastings in the Mail on Sunday on 15 December:

Theirs was a difficult relationship that has become the stuff of West End drama – and today The Mail on Sunday can reveal one possible source of the tension between The Queen and Margaret Thatcher. Official papers just made public show the Prime Minister repeatedly rescheduled and cancelled their weekly audiences, risking the irritation of Buckingham Palace. Even Mrs Thatcher’s own aides warned her of ‘pushing her luck’ and potentially ‘spoiling the relationship’ with the Palace over her requests to rearrange the meetings. …

All credit to the MoS for its efforts:

Mrs Thatcher’s bids to rearrange the meetings are revealed in official papers declassified following a Freedom of Information request by The Mail on Sunday, and covering the three years after Mrs Thatcher took office in 1979.

but Prime Ministers are very busy people, rather more so than constitutional monarchs, and this sort of thing may always be happening. There will almost certainly be further FOI requests for other PMs and, if so, we might learn more.