𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Exactly 50 years ago this week, Harold Wilson resigned as Prime Minister. He remains the only Labour leader in history to leave office at the time of his own choosing. But what is striking about his premiership today are the parallels with Sir Keir Starmer, particularly in the current Iranian crisis. Just as Sir Keir has provoked the withering scorn of President Trump with his opposition to Britain’s involvement in the present conflict, so Wilson caused real anger in Lyndon Johnson’s administration during the mid-sixties with his refusal to send British troops to Vietnam.

In bitter fury, the President described Wilson as “a little creep”, while there is also an echo of Trump’s disdain for Nato in the hostile language used by Washington about Wilson’s Downing Street. “All we needed from you was one regiment. But you wouldn’t. Well, don’t expect us to save you again,” said Dean Rusk, Johnson’s Secretary of State. Interestingly, Sir Keir regards Wilson as his political hero, a verdict that says much about the beleaguered Prime Minister’s values.

Wilson was undoubtedly a more effective politician than Sir Keir, helped by his formidable intellect which saw him reach the Cabinet at the age of just 31. But his cleverness also inspired distrust. He was widely seen as a slippery opportunist, full of cunning but devoid of principles. It was joked at Westminster that there were two things wrong with Harold Wilson: his face!

The same charges of deviousness and lack of convictions are today levelled at Starmer. One Labour colleague complains that “he has no fixed views on anything. There is no clarity because there is no belief”. Starmer’s inadequacies shine through his wooden, deceitful performances at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQ). Wilson, supposedly a skilled communicator, could be just as dismal. He hated PMQ so much that he frequently reached for a bottle of brandy to calm his nerves.

Keen to gain some proletarian credibility, both men exaggerated toughness of their upbringing. Starmer’s tiresome self-identification as the “son of a toolmaker” matches Wilson’s claim that in his Huddersfield youth, poverty was so bad that many children had no footwear. When he heard this, senior Tory Harold Macmillan quipped: “If Wilson was barefoot, it was because he was too big for his boots.”

In both their cases, the pose of moral righteousness often smacked of hypocrisy, given how badly their premierships were tainted by scandals like Starmer’s appointment of Peter Mandelson or Wilson’s crony-led patronage of honours. Nor were these ethical failings balanced by any outstanding record of achievement.

Indeed, the Labour bruiser Denis Healey called Wilson “a terrible Prime Minister”. In the face of economic decline and social unrest, Wilson’s rhetoric about forging the new Britain in “the white heat of the technological revolution” proved as hollow as his pledges to maintain the value of sterling.

Starmer’s dire leadership mixes serial incompetence with timidity and misjudgements. According to the latest approval ratings, Sir Keir is the most unpopular Prime Minister in history, while his party continues to sink in the opinion polls, menaced on its right flank by Reform and on its left by the Greens.

In a cynical bid to expand its electoral base, Starmer’s government plans to extend the franchise to 16-year-olds, thinking that young people are more likely to vote Labour. But the move could backfire spectacularly, since teenage voters seem to be flocking to the banners of either Reform or the Greens.

Almost the same happened to Wilson. In 1969, he tried to revive Labour by lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, on the assumption the 800,000 new juvenile electors would be mainly left-wing. But this proved to be a delusion as Wilson was heavily defeated in the 1970 General Election. Yet Labour allowed him to retain the leadership for another six years.

Sir Keir will not be similarly indulged if Labour is smashed at the May elections. Already the key contenders in the battle for the succession are on manoeuvres, typified by Angela Rayner’s brutal speech on Tuesday. No amount of distancing from Trump or manipulation of the franchise are likely to save him now.

Brace yourself for the death of British nationhood

During their long campaign against the implementation of Brexit, the Remainer-led establishment has had the perfect ally in Labour, which has always regarded the 2016 vote as a disaster. In opposition, the party not only pushed for a second referendum but also engaged in hysterical propaganda against their opponents, with David Lammy, now Deputy Prime Minister, notoriously comparing Tory Brexiteers to Nazis.

Since coming to office in 2024, Labour has paid lip service to the continuation of Brexit, while working ruthlessly to undermine it. The party’s strategy is to reverse the 2016 decision, not by another vote but by a rolling programme of accelerating submission to EU regulations and financial demands. That was spelt out by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves in a lecture on Tuesday, in which she vowed to fight for “closer alignment” with the EU, so that divergence from Brussels’ rules would become “the exception”.

Soon we will have Brexit in name only. Institutional surrender will ensure the death of British nationhood. As free movement, open borders and vast financial contributions return, the Eurocrats’ empire will take back control – and not a single British citizen will have been consulted.

Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has been nicknamed “the King of the North”. But the would-be Labour leader has a potential rival for the title of most effective civic leader in the city. Sir Stephen Watson, the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, who has transformed crime-fighting in the city by returning to the basics that used to make our police the envy of the world.

When he took up the post in 2021, more than 200 offences a day were not being recorded at all and morale was low. But, Sir Stephen imposed faster response times to 999 calls, increased stop-and-search fivefold, ordered officers to smarten their uniforms and purged the top brass of the defeatists and incompetents. Altogether, since taking charge, he has sacked 156 officers and raised the annual number of arrests from 31,000 to 74,000. As a result, crime rates have all plummeted.

He sums up his approach like this: “Be diligent, look like you give a damn, record crime, investigate crime and – here’s a novel concept – arrest bad people.” That refreshing common sense should be at the heart of all British policing.

Len Deighton, who has just died at the age of 97, had the extraordinary range of his talents. In addition to his prolific literary output, he worked as an illustrator, chef, film producer, screen writer, cartoonist, photographer and travel correspondent for Playboy magazine. When he first tasted success as a best-selling author, he briefly embraced the celebrity lifestyle of Swinging London. But with steely restraint, he soon left this world to concentrate on his work. “Two things destroy a writer: praise and alcohol,” he once said.

Still plenty of life left in this bomber!

There is an understandable tendency to think that advances in technology become ever more rapid. But that is not always the case, as shown by the unique longevity of the mighty American B-52 bomber, which has been flying in the last fortnight from RAF Fairford on missions against Iran.

Astonishingly, this bomber was conceived in the late 1940s, and went into service in 1955. There is still plenty of life left in this colossus of the skies.