Labour leaders looking to cite successful predecessors, at least in the most obvious electoral sense, don’t have many to choose from. Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair: the old-fashioned ring of those first three names tells us how long ago most of Labour’s sporadic premierships were. It is now 50 years since a general election was won by a Labour leader other than Blair.
Successful Labour governments have been even rarer, if we measure success by how they are remembered. Media bias against the party, the more subtle negativity of many historians and the critical eyes of many Labour voters, members and politicians: all these have combined for decades to highlight the party’s failures in office and downgrade its achievements.
