Steve Richards (3) (1960–)

I found this absolutely fascinating. Steve Richards has looked at the last ten British Prime Ministers, starting from Harold Wilson who first came into office in 1964 (as it happens, the year after I was born). Interestingly, he was the only one of the ten who served non-consecutive terms as Prime Minister.

It is certainly intriguing to consider the vast changes in the nature of political coverage in the media throughout that period. Harold Wilson was one of the first Prime ministers to recognise the importance of television as a means of connecting with the electorate. For his predecessors, there had been relatively little media coverage of, or interest in, politics beyond the printed press. That started to change as we moved into the 1960s, fuelled by the onset of greater public affluence, the spread of television (not least because of the unprecedented impact of television satire programmes such as That Was The Week That Was), and the additional fuel arising from scandals such as the Profumo Affair.

Steve Richards is a political journalist and observer of long vintage, though not long enough actually to have been reporting on the terms in office of Wilson or his successor, Edward Heath. He does, however, share a personal recollection of a public meeting he attended at which Wilson showed great adroitness in managing the audience.

Richards is known as a man of the left, but his accounts seem well balanced. I certainly enjoyed his reminiscences of crises and episodes that I recall from my own youth, although several of them had been long buried in my memory until he nudged them back to life. His chapter on the ill-fated premiership of Theresa May is particularly poignant, in its portrayal of the insurmountable ranks of opposition lined against her, on all sides of the party delineations.

Overall, this was an informative and entertaining account. The contrast that Richards draws between the respective skills and talents of the different Prime Ministers, and their suitability (or not) to the office that they took on, is enlightening.… (mais)