The Prime Ministers We Never Had: Success and Failure from Butler to Corbyn

Product Information

Castlereagh, Viscount, President of the Board of Control (29 April 1805). "Military Commissioners' Bill". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Vol.4. House of Commons. col.496. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list ( link)

Administrations and Political Biographies". British Historical Facts: 1688–1760 (1sted.). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-349-02369-1. Deaths". The British Magazine and Review. Vol.1. 1782. The Most Honourable Charles Watson Wentworth.Eccleshall, Robert; Walker, Graham, eds. (2002). Biographical Dictionary of British Prime Ministers (2nded.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-66230-2.

Steve Richards is acutely fair-minded in his political analysis, but never at the expense of his prose becoming leaden or dull. He is also more than willing to challenge conventional political wisdom (his chapter on the gregarious Ken Clarke show the arch-Thatcherite economics lying behind his amiable public persona).It’s hard to say whether a hung parliament, when no party wins a majority, means the Prime Minister in charge of a coalition should be described as ‘unelected’. This happened in 1910 (twice), 1923, 1929, 1974, 2010 and 2017. This book is less a series of biographies of Richards’ chosen figures than it is a comparative political analysis of why some party leaders make it to Number 10 while others, no matter how talented or visionary they might be, fall short of attaining the PM’s office. If there are common themes as to why these ‘nearly men’ (and Barbara Castle) didn’t accede to the premiership, then the issue of Europe is pronounced, with Richards showing how Britain’s relationship with the E.E.C./E.U. hobbled the ambitions of many of his subjects (particularly the Tory examples). Other recurring shortcomings for an aspiring Prime Minister – from Rab Butler through to Denis Healy, Michael Heseltine, and Ken Clarke – are a failure to cultivate a band of devoted followers within their own parliamentary party, or falling out with their party’s grassroots supporters (no matter how demented and divorced from reality the latter group might be).

Vincitorio, Gaetano L., ed. (1968). Studies in Modern History. New York, US: St. John's University Press. OCLC 908430. My future wife and I were on our first holiday together in Turkey and we were enjoying an afternoon beer in a bar in Bodrum, some English tourists (I'm Scottish) were also standing at the bar and they had a copy of The Daily Star lying in front of them, unread, the banner headline announcing the terrible news.I thought this book was generally good. I found it interesting and informative, but overall, it felt quite wooly. As I probably should have expected from the title, it does rely on the authors opinions of why these certain people didn't manage to become Prime Minister, and some of the reasons were wishy-washy.