This fascinating collection of essays is ‘thematically driven rather than chronologically organised’, with each opposition leader evaluated against an explicit analytical framework comprising four specific criteria: their proficiency as a public communicator; their construction of a public policy platform; their abilities at party management; and their emotional intelligence. Some of Labour’s most admired leaders come off very badly indeed. Hugh Gaitskell is depicted less as social democratic hero and ‘lost prime minister’ than as a pedantic control freak ‘hampered by defects in temperament’. Clement Attlee’s woeful opposition leadership between 1951-55 is summed up by Kevin Jefferys’ acute observation: ‘[He] may have hoped for unity but he had no strategy for achieving it [and] he failed to respond to an increasingly confident Tory government … [By] insisting on remaining as leader … Attlee damaged both his own reputation and the party’s prospects.’
The essays’ weakness is in the insufficient weight they give to aspects of context: some leaders had it easier than others. Thus Gaitskell is described as creating ‘apoplexy on the left’ by his pledge to ‘fight, and fight and fight again’ to overturn the Labour conference decision on unilateralism. That a unilateralist Labour party would have been unelectable receives surprisingly little emphasis and nor is the contextual role of organised Trotskyism in fomenting the ‘left discontent’ explained.
So what makes for an effective leader of the opposition? Contributor Nigel Fletcher, author of the excellent essay on William Hague, cites Winston Churchill’s advice that an opposition should be ‘a lighthouse not a shop window’ in the sense that it should offer a direction and a narrative of what sort of government it would be without necessarily detailing every dot and comma.
As the editor, Timothy Heppell, points out: ‘The experiences of the Conservatives in 2001 and 2005 and indeed Labour in the 1980s, demonstrate the dangers of adopting core-vote strategies rather than reaching out.’ Heppell’s conclusion carries a warning for Labour: ‘Effective opposition leadership … involves a complex interaction between the need to strategically reposition the party to broaden their appeal … and ensuring the leader is visible, charismatic, likeable and competent. The demands on leaders of the opposition today are considerably greater than in the past … the expectations of leaders of the opposition to be the brand identifiers for their party have increased.’
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Greg Rosen is author of Serving the People and a contributor to How to be in Opposition
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Timothy Heppell (ed)
Palgrave Macmillan | 288pp | £60