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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
National
Gavin Cordon

Roy Hattersley: Labour’s ‘nearly man’ who fought to hold the party together

Roy Hattersley (left) with Neil Kinnock as they celebrate their election as Labour’s deputy leader and leader respectively (PA) - (PA Archive)

On April Fools’ Day 1992 an exuberant Roy Hattersley took to the stage in his home city of Sheffield and told a pumped-up Labour Party rally they were about to take power “because we have caught the spirit of the time”.

Eight days later, those dreams were in tatters as the Tories, to the surprise of the pollsters, chalked up a fourth successive general election triumph.

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