Harold Wilson: The Winner

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Rt Hon Nick Thomas-Symonds MP is the Shadow Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office, having been appointed to the role by Sir Keir Starmer KC MP in September 2023. There are fewer “secrets” in the archives than many imagine, and this biography, though very well written, should be read as the case for the defence rather than for new discoveries. Thomas-Symonds, however, would like us to see Wilson’s Britain as a different place to Thatcher’s: a modern country, socially liberal, anti-racist and in Europe.

Harold Wilson: The winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds Harold Wilson: The winner by Nick Thomas-Symonds

At the moment when the announcement was made, in 1976, I was standing to attention on the runway of Sofia’s airport, clutching a sheaf of giant gladioli and listening to the eighth or ninth verse of Bulgaria’s national anthem. His was the government to decriminalise homosexuality, legalise abortion and abolish capital punishment. With a brilliant mind, sure-footed political moves and a feel for public opinion, he was a survivor who over and over again emerged from desperate crises – even, perhaps, conspiracies – to lead his party to victory. It is certainly time for Wilson to be revisited, although there are already several excellent biographies of him, not least Ben Pimlott’s 1993 tome and Philip Ziegler’s authorised biography published in the same year.Mixing anecdote and fact, Thomas-Symonds paints a vivid picture of the era that is hard to find elsewhere. But, as Thomas-Symons points out, Wilson exhibited throughout these testing times extraordinary resili­ence and lightness of touch, even in the gravest situations.

The Guardian Roy Hattersley | The Guardian

Thomas-Symonds makes the case for Wilson as a different kind of winner from the warrior Blair or the flash-in-the-pan prime ministers who followed him. But in 1968 we loftily despised Wilson for twisting and turning to stay out of Vietnam and keep his party together.

All the old canards were dredged up and regurgitated to produce a consensus that he had something to hide. It was assumed that he made the distinction in the hope of trivialising Bevan’s rebellion and capturing the leadership of the Labour left. The message of this book is that if Starmer could match Wilson, he would deserve a significant place in history. Nick Thomas-Symonds’s new biography, Harold Wilson: The Winner, is a valiant attempt at presenting its subject, if not as a model for our times, then at least as a Labour hero. Unwisely, Wilson sought a political victory over the Tories by legislating to stop unofficial strikes.

the winner’ Harold Wilson Keir Starmer is looking more like ‘the winner’ Harold Wilson

No bloody vision’, but slowly and effectively Wilson began putting forward a prospectus for a modern Britain that avoided old arguments of left and right and was based on planned economic management, a harnessing of new technologies and a cradle-to-grave education system that excluded no one. For others, his pragmatism made him an excellent leader, someone who was not doggedly wedded to ideology but able to recognise the strengths in those that were. A prime minister is invariably held responsible for catastrophes that – in the fashionable phrase – occur “on his or her watch”.

But a flexible interpretation of policies and promises has never excluded a prime minister from the pantheon of great politicians.