Everyone in the Commons whom I have asked can remember exactly what he was doing, this time last year, when he heard the news that Harold Wilson had resigned. And so can I, and so, I suspect, can you. We may not have been doing anything particularly interesting. We may not, like Roy Hattersley, have just landed in Bulgaria, or, like Dickson Mabon, have just recovered our senses in the dentist’s chair (when they told Mabon the news, his first reaction was to ask how long he had been under the anaesthetic). Nevertheless, we remember. The assassin’s bullet could not have made the occasion more singular.
Even those who had been informed, months in advance, that Wilson would resign at 60, and even some of his cabinet colleagues were surprised. Denis Healey, who had just been earning the hatred of the Left in Parliament, must have been appalled at the timing. The late Tony Crosland was certainly caught off his guard. Jim Callaghan was not surprised, and nor was Nigel Dempster, but the rest of us were. We were surprised and intrigued. We instinctively rejected the explanation given, and we waited to be told the real cause of the resignation.
There were two possible reasons that sprang to mind. One was that Wilson was getting out while the going was good. The other was scandal. (We were, as you may remember, in the middle of the Thorpe affair at the time, and our minds were attuned to innuendo.) In a sense, both of the explanations have since been tried out. There was an economic crisis ahead. The pound did crash. Humiliating terms were demanded for an IMF loan. Labour did lose its majority in the Commons and the legislative programme did grind to a halt. And yet here we all are. It wasn’t the end of the world after all. It is difficult to imagine Wilson being too scared to go on in government, if this was all he saw in his crystal ball.
The second explanation has yet to be vindicated. The papers have had a good go, however, and there are enough mysteries left to intrigue one. What was the real story about the theft of Wilson’s papers? What was the real story about the South African connection? Did BOSS steal the papers? or did MI6? And what about all those peerages? And what about Eastern Europe? And is it true, as Joe Haines thinks, that Wilson would have gone on at No 10 had it not been for Marcia?
These are absorbing questions for daydreamers. One might say that his resignation is the last interesting thing about Wilson. Everything else, since he left office, has lost its glitter. This is not a necessary consequence of becoming an ex-prime minister. In Wilson’s case the loss of reputation has been remarkable. The reputation of Ted Heath grew quite absurdly after his defeat, so that he is now considered an Elder Statesman, the sort of chap to whom one might entrust the whole United Nations. One would not wish to go into the jungle with Heath, but one might send him in on one’s behalf. Not so Sir Harold.
A year ago he was considered unique—”a king without heir, apparent or presumptive”. “The marks of his new prime ministership” were “dignity and self-discipline”. He had “come closer than any other politician in his time to an instinctive understanding of the British people”. His achievement was like that of Baldwin—he had steered the country through dangerous times, when it had sometimes appeared ungovernable. It was possible that, like Baldwin, he would be used as a scapegoat for the national decline over which he had presided, but it was more likely that, like Baldwin, he would eventually come to be appreciated for his ability to govern “in the spirit of the times”. There was a maturity in his new style. He had reversed the trend in government from prime-ministerial back to cabinet control. He had perhaps succeeded in turning the Labour Party into the natural party of government.
Today the chief purveyor of these views (Peter Jenkins, in this paper) has changed his mind. Wilson is considered beneath contempt. He has brought politics into disrepute. His television interview after the Haines revelations completed the process begun by his resignation honours list. He has come to look much smaller—a pathetic, henpecked, shuffling individual. He is even said by some to have physically shrunk. His parliamentary colleagues have suddenly decided he’s a terrible old bore. They always knew that he had unusual talents in the field of boring, but there had previously been something heroic about it, a suspicion perhaps that it was all done on purpose. Now, as he tells them how Crossman got it all wrong in his Diaries, and how Lord Blake thinks that The Governance of Britain is the best thing since Bagehot, they can see they were mistaken.
Why did it happen? Everybody who came into contact with Wilson knew the way the show was run. There was no reason that they should be surprised by Haines’s book (which, incidentally, Tony Benn thinks is a very important work, although I gather that he has not read the chapter on ‘Marcia’). The resignation honours were merely a confirmation of everyone’s worst fears.
Surely the real reason for Wilson’s loss of reputation lies in his loss of uniqueness. Heath did not have to stay around while a Conservative prime minister took over the running of the country and showed that she could do it better, or even just as well. The galling fact is that Callaghan has taken over all Wilson’s supposedly unique attributes. It is strange to think of it, considering the Government’s record over the past year, but at no time has Callaghan been compared unfavourably with his predecessor. Perhaps there was a feeling that the conference speech would have been better handled by Wilson, but even then there were those who found the change of style refreshing. For the rest, it is remarkable how little nostalgia there has been.
One year after Wilson, the social contract may be on the ropes, Leyland may be on the ropes, devolution may be on the ropes. We may all be on the ropes, but it doesn’t seem to worry the Prime Minister unduly. There is about him the air of a man who has no fear of meeting his maker face to face. It is a quality that Wilson never possessed, a certain seraphic calm. Where has he acquired it from? It is difficult to say, but it is a valuable quality, much admired by his colleagues and adversaries. Margaret Thatcher could well do with a bit of it. Sir Keith Joseph would worry us all a lot less if he possessed it in the slightest degree. It would be the making of Benn. One cannot help feeling, however, that seraphic calm by itself will not be enough to see Labour through. Will the electorate turn out to vote for a seraph? One cannot help feeling that it is something of a reckless gamble.
And now that a large number of Labour MPs are too nervous about their futures to wish to risk anything dramatic, and now that we are getting used to a House of Commons in which the great debate of the day is over whether or not to increase the format of Hansard (answer: not), and now that we’re all well rested and have begun to catch up on the latest films and shows, it is hardly likely that Callaghan is going to get much stick from his own side. Sir Harold Wilson may contemplate all this from the shadows with a certain degree of justified bitterness. How does Jim, after all, get away with so much? And why should his predecessor be despised, merely for not being unique? Let him take comfort then from reciting the words of Shakespeare’s Wolsey:
“… I have ventured/Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders/This many summers in a sea of glory,/But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride/At length broke under me, and now has left me,/Weary, and old with service, to the mercy/Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.”
[Further reading: From the archive: Profumiana]
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This article appears in the 18 Feb 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Class warrior
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