Politics
Dream Cabinet of the century
Published 20 December 1999
New Statesman Millennium - Dream Cabinet of the century: report by the Returning Officer, Stephen Brasher
It was just like general election night as we waited for the results of our elections for Dream Cabinet of the 20th century. Except that all the excitement was not about who would be Prime Minister - Clement Attlee's success was never in doubt - but over the identity of his deputy. For much of the night, Tony Blair led; but then William Whitelaw, in a late surge, overtook him at the finishing post. Alastair Campbell demanded a recount. (Well, we didn't ask him actually; but we were sure he would have done.) But Whitelaw it was, by a single vote.
We asked readers (in our issues of 22 and 29 November and 6 December) to nominate ministers for 12 specific cabinet posts. They were given two further "wild card" votes for those ministers whom they favoured but for whom they had not been able to find jobs. The last four cabinet posts, therefore, went to those ministers (not hitherto allocated positions) who came top when all their nominations, including the "wild card" votes, were aggregated.
We wanted a coalition government. So our rules required each reader to nominate at least three Tories, at least one who has served in a Blair cabinet (but no more than three in all) and at least two who retired from parliament before 1945.
Nobody is likely to be surprised by Attlee's success, with 28 per cent of the votes for Prime Minister, more than twice as many as for any other candidate. Winston Churchill and Lloyd George tied for second place. Nobody else got more than a handful, but it is worth recording that John Smith headed the chasing pack, with twice as many votes as Blair, who tied with Margaret Thatcher. Some one-time favourites fared badly: nobody wanted James Callaghan as prime minister (indeed, hardly anybody wanted him in their cabinet at all), and Harold Wilson lagged behind even Stanley Baldwin.
That brought us to the most dramatic race of all. Attlee actually headed the poll for Deputy PM as well as PM, since many of those who had not voted him into No 10 gave him the consolation prize. So the job had to go to the runner-up. And though Lloyd George, R A Butler, Wilson and Churchill all ran strongly, Whitelaw and Blair were the clear contenders. The Tory perhaps had the edge because of his experience of occupying the position.
For Chancellor, Gordon Brown (25 per cent) and Lloyd George (17 per cent) were the only serious contenders. Kenneth Clarke came third, but a long way behind. Stafford Cripps and Roy Jenkins had a few supporters, but poor Callaghan again failed to trouble the scorers.
For Home Secretary, Jenkins, who was responsible for much of the liberalising legislation of the 1960s, was out on his own, with 32 per cent of the vote. The only other significant support was for Butler and, perhaps surprisingly, Jack Straw.
Robin Cook will be less pleased with the single vote (the same as Michael Portillo) that he got for Foreign Secretary. Here, the clear winner was Ernest Bevin (17 per cent), with Edward Heath second. Lord Carrington and Lloyd George tied for third place.
All those of a nervous disposition should look away now. The winner of the Cabinet Enforcer post was one Margaret Hilda Thatcher (11 per cent). And her closest challenger was - wait for it - Peter Mandelson (8 per cent). Bevin and Healey tied for third place, suggesting that many readers thought this was a position where physical bulk might help. The two readers who nominated John Major were perhaps being ironic.
Next comes perhaps the shrewdest choice of all. Though few voted for him as PM (or, for that matter, in any other cabinet post), Harold Wilson sailed in at Trade and Industry, with 16 per cent of the vote. Readers clearly remembered the young Harold's performance as president of the board of trade under Attlee. Michael Heseltine beat Gordon Brown for second place by a single vote. Since Brown would have been ineligible by virtue of already being installed as Chancellor, it should be noted that Tony Benn was fourth, but well behind.
At Education, it was no contest. Butler, the Conservative architect of the 1944 Education Act, was the comfortable winner with 25 per cent. The best of the rest were Anthony Crosland (8 per cent) and Shirley Williams (6 per cent). Roy Hattersley, Sir Edward Boyle and even Thatcher all had their supporters but, sad to relate, David Blunkett got just one vote.
At Health, to nobody's surprise, Aneurin Bevan won a landslide of awesome proportion. With 57 per cent of the vote, he was the only minister to get an overall majority. Of the others, only Lloyd George had significant support.
And at Defence the choice, when you think about it, was equally obvious. Churchill romped home with 28 per cent, followed by Denis Healey (13 per cent) and Paddy Ashdown (9 per cent).
Many readers clearly used the last two cabinet posts to fit in favoured politicians who hadn't so far made it or to maintain the required balance. This gave an exceptionally wide spread of nominations. But Barbara Castle, minister of transport 1965-68, came out top for Environment, albeit with only 6 per cent of the votes. Heseltine trailed her by a single vote. Michael Meacher will no doubt be thrilled to hear that he beat his boss, John Prescott, and tied for third place with the late Alan Clark (yes, really).
For Culture, there were no fewer than 78 different nominations, including one each for Ron Davies and Tom Driberg. (One can only speculate about the thinking involved.) But Jennie Lee was the clear winner (12 per cent), followed by Chris Smith (7 per cent). Michael Foot had his supporters, as did Heath, presumably on the basis that even if he couldn't win more funding for the arts, he could at least save a conductor's salary somewhere.
That left us with four cabinet posts, to be allocated to those also-rans with the highest aggregate of votes for all ministerial posts plus their "wild cards". (Some readers apparently interpreted "wild" rather literally, nominating, for example, Woodrow Wyatt, Ian Paisley, Dennis Skinner and Dave Nellist.)
Here, the counting went on long into the night, tension rising by the minute. There was no question that Lloyd George would make it - the majority of readers wanted him in their cabinet somewhere - nor that Healey, well ahead of his old rival Benn, would get in, too. But would Tony Blair?
For a while, against strong challenges from Benn, Clarke and Heseltine, it looked as if he wouldn't. But eventually (and no, we wouldn't have rigged it even for you, Alastair) he was home, a single vote ahead of Benn, with the two Tories left in the cold by a margin of just four votes.
The actual cabinet positions for these last four successes were allocated by NS staff. We decided that Benn, whose service in the Commons spans the longest period of time, deserved to be Leader of the House. Lloyd George got Social Security, in recognition of his achievement in introducing national insurance. We thought of giving him Northern Ireland, but decided this wasn't exactly the moment to revive memories of the Black and Tans.
Nevertheless, we did think a no-nonsense approach was needed, and that meant Healey. And Blair? Well, only agriculture was left. He has, after all, shown great interest in the beef war - and we'll just have to risk spending the next century eating GM foods.
It remained only to draw the three lucky recipients of champagne: Stephen de Winton, Stefan Stern and Mek Phillips.
Special commendations (but no prizes) to the reader who submitted a plausible cabinet made up solely of women and to those two readers who submitted Nightmare Cabinets, of which we print one here.
The Dream Cabinet
Prime Minister: Clement Attlee
Deputy Prime Minister: William Whitelaw
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Gordon Brown
Home Secretary: Roy Jenkins
Foreign Secretary: Ernest Bevin
Cabinet Enforcer: Margaret Thatcher
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry: Harold Wilson
Secretary of State for Education: R A Butler
Secretary of State for Health: Aneurin Bevan
Secretary of State for Defence: Winston Churchill
Secretary of State for the Environment: Barbara Castle
Secretary of State for Culture: Jennie Lee
Leader of the House of Commons: Tony Benn
Secretary of State for Social Security: David Lloyd George
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland: Denis Healey
Minister of Agriculture: Tony Blair
. . . And the Nightmare Cabinet
Prime Minister: Oswald Mosley
Deputy Prime Minister: Neil Hamilton
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Robert Maxwell
Home Secretary: Lord Lucan
Foreign Secretary: John Profumo
Cabinet Enforcer: Neville Chamberlain
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry: Lord Beeching
Secretary of State for Education: Rhodes Boyson
Secretary of State for Health: Nicholas Ridley
Secretary of State for Defence: Jonathan Aitken
Secretary of State for the Environment: Harvey Proctor
Secretary of State for Culture: David Evans
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