Part XV
Part XV:
♣ Roy Jenkins, Centre Ground, (Harper Collins, 1991):
"The increasing rumours of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland having to call an early general election in Spring of 1987 to forestall the publication of a diary of a mistress of a disgraced Cabinet minister made sure there would be no Spring 1987 general election. The fear of being mocked for cowardice overrode the fear of the embarrassing revelations. Though I am sure it did wonders for the sales of Ms. Ozols's book. I myself have not read it, not out of prudishness or disapproval of low brow literature, but merely because I did not have to read it for the most sensational claims within it were splashed across the dailies in the week preceding the publication of the book, including the implication of an affair of a Cabinet minister with a fellow Conservative MP."
★ Azucena Ozols, My Alan Clark Diary, (Bantam Press, 1987):
"29 July, 1985. I found Al (Alan Clark) gloomy. I thought it was because he had been manhandled by Norman Tebbit during his gallant but silly defence of Margaret Thatcher over Europe and began to reassure him I still found him manly. He rather liked that word. But he shook his head and told me it was a different matter. 'The Lady asked me to find a spot for John Major at Treasury, but rumour has it the old boy is shagging Edwina Currie. Ghastly, isn't it? Most women age horribly when they get to the House and Edwina Currie was no great looker before she got into Parliament.'"
♤ Norman Lamont, Inside Westminster, (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1996):
"Ms. Ozols could have easily excised the passage regarding Mr. Major from her book, but chose to leave it in and thereby wrecked a man's career. Given the perverse milieu in which she operated, she was not content to indulge in the baser instincts of the public with a tale about Jeffrey Archer or her own beau and instead went after a much more innocent man. Having worked with John Major I can tell you he is a man of great intellect and had, and still has, vast political potential. What went on between him and a woman other than his wife is a matter for him, his wife and the other woman. Instead it became tabloid fodder, for less than a day. A man's life was turned upside down and his political career stalled because a failed actress in search of someone to pay her rent attached herself to a lecherous self-indulgent over-promoted village idiot who said too much and thought too little, and the failed actress then parroted his words in the hopes of buying a much more sparkly outfit for her next societal outing and hoping to prolong her rapidly dwindling career of pseudo-fame."
♣ Dick Taverne, Vagabond, (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1988):
"More than a few hopeful voices in the SDP thought John Major's resignation would have an impact on the local elections by reminding the voters of the The Sleaze of Tom King's ministry during its first year, but the results were muddled. We did better than expected, but not as well as we would have liked. Conservatives lost 100 councilors, which was in no way remarkable and Labour lost only 300. It did not surprise me that Mr. King elected not to have a general election in the Summer of '87 after such a result. It was very inconclusive and, it must be remembered, he had until June of '88 to hold an election."
★ Joe Trippi, Sleepless Summers, (Faber, 1998):
"May 1987 found me Deputy Political Director of the prohibitive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party of the United States of America Senator Gary Hart. Gary had charm, intellect and a deft touch for politics. He then proceeded to shoot himself in the testicles by daring the press to follow him around to disprove rumors of his infidelity. The press duly followed and found pictures of a gorgeous twenty-nine year old actress sitting on his married lap in front of a boat named, and I wish I was making this up, 'Monkey Business.' Following that implosion, I found myself without a candidate or a job. Oh and my marriage finally fell apart due to me being a terrible husband and even worse father. As I lay in bed and contemplated whether I should get up to use the bathroom or just go there and then I got a phone call from Philip Gould asking me to help look into the recent Tory successes and how to identify and combat the overall Tory strategy. Poor Philip did not realize he could have gotten me to work for free and actually agreed to pay me a decent rate to come in as a consultant, with first class accommodation. I agreed and then got up to go to the bathroom.
I found England to be a less gloomy place for Labour than during my last visit, but one in a state of high anxiety. The recent Parliamentary by-elections and local elections (think counties and districts) made them all twitchy and Philip asked me to review the recent Tory campaigns. Since he was paying me top dollar, uh, pound, I agreed and fortified with terribly weak Coke (British Coca Cola uses vegetable extract instead of good old fashioned American chemicals) I perused the Tory TV spots, radio commercials, posters and pamphlets and compared them to their earlier works in a nice office Philip Gould was renting. I was struck by how much weaker and less effective the new Conservative spots, radio commercials and posters were. The bulk of the work was done by the same company, Saatchi and Saatchi, but their '87 products lacked style. I later found out the man behind the earlier campaign had quit their company and started his own firm, which did not do him much good with King's Tories as he was seen as Mrs. Thatcher's man. Then I turned to pamphlets and leaflets. Here, the results were even more in Labour favor. The '83 batch were cruel and effective, the new batch felt dated and restrained. All in all, I found the Tory campaign material to be noticeably worse in '87 than in '83, based on the evidence before me. Bored, and getting paid by the hour, I then reviewed the Labour material. It had improved greatly.
I told Philip his campaign materials were fine and that of the opposition were not as good. He thanked me, hesitated and left the room. Bryan Gould called me in the next day into his terrible office at the Not Transport House and asked me to look into the rumors of the Tory Party hiring Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. I almost did a spit take. Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly is an American political consulting firm. They had many clients and many employees, but there was only one name on their roster all Democratic political junkies and professional campaigners feared, The Dark Lord of Political Arts: Lee Atwater. The shilling dropped. I was flown in at great expense to be the Labour's pet Yankee defender against the attacks of the alleged new Yankee pet of Tories - Lee Atwater. I laughed. First of all, asking me to stop Lee Atwater is like asking a man with a spoon to stop a man with a bazooka. I pride myself on being a smart and an effective campaigner, but Lee was the most ruthless campaigner in the history of American politics. He'd eat me alive and then spit out my bones into the faces of my loved ones while taunting them and drinking their tears. Second, Lee breathed and lived American politics, he had no interest in England. Third, the Tories had nothing to offer him. Money was nothing to Lee. He wanted power, and by 1987 he was sitting on the right hand of the Vice President of the United States of America and the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party. All this I said with my usual lack of grace, was thanked for my 'tough and frank views' (code for, 'you did not tell us what we wanted to hear, jerk') and was once again paid on time. I returned to America to run the underfunded losing Democratic primary campaign of Dick Gephardt. It ended badly and to this day I am owed $89,000 for it. Also I discovered I had an onset of diabetes."
♥ Bryan Gould, Hard Labour, (Penguin Books, 1989):
"Philip (Gould) and I met with Neil (Kinnock), his wife, Giles (Radice), Charles Clarke and Denis (Healey) to discuss the results of the May '87 local elections. Though disappointed, Neil understood we were making progress for the upcoming general election. There was a robust discussion over the extent of our success. Neil remained upbeat throughout the postmortem and contributed to our discourse."
♥ Denis Healey, Silly Billies, (Penguin Books, 1990):
"As we were discussing the theme for the various posters we had earmarked to be distributed to the Labour Party headquarters of the constituencies at the next general election (which we felt was just around the corner), the conversation suddenly and quite unexpectedly veered into the effectiveness of having any posters at all. I do not recall who espoused which argument. The conversation was rather academic and more than a little silly, but reached the heights of passion due to it being an election matter. It is hard to explain to those of you who have not experienced the madness of a national campaign, but it has an unfortunate tendency to make the most mundane seem feverish. It was in the midst of this discussion that we experienced some heated outbursts, most of which I could not recall."
♥ Philip Gould, Confessions of an Adman, (HarperCollins, 1996):
"Denis kept banging on how much we needed posters to keep up morale in the Party, ignoring all attempts by Giles to get him to calm himself, when suddenly Neil cried out, 'None of this is of any use! It's not the posters! It's me! They're never going to elect someone like me!' Giles jumped to his feet and motioned for all to leave. We scuttled out of the room, leaving Neil alone with his wife and Giles. Denis cracked jokes about the Tories and talked football with us for fifteen minutes, pretending nothing had happened. Bryan got in on the act and did his best to joke through it. Charles Clarke mutely studied me during the whole of the ordeal, trying to discern how I would react to the outburst. I was shocked, but did not show it. I did not realize how much Neil's nerves were frayed. The door opened, and Neil strolled out, all smiles, followed by his wife and the near always placid Giles. Charles walked up to me and hissed with all the considerable menace he could exude, 'This never happened. Understood?' I nodded. But I did not forget. The strain of a near-election had caused a near collapse in my Party's Leader. What would a sustained election bring out?"
★ Alastair John Campbell, The Claret Revolution, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):
"In the anticipation of the Spring '87 election which never came, three constituency Labour parties deselected their MPs. John Forrester of Stoke-on-Trent North was deselected due to age in favor of a London based radical (Joan Walley). Michael McGuire of Makerfield fell due to his support for the miners who elected to work during the Scargill Strike. The other casualty of the National Union of Mineworkers was Alec Woodall of Hemsworth who supported the police during their clashes with the Scargill strikers. All three promptly defected to the SDP."
♥ Joe Ashton, My Labour, My Party, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):
"In '72, when Dick Taverne ran into trouble with his local Labour Party, no one paid attention for no one thought it would go far. When he was deselected, much head shaking resulted, but no one thought it would go far. When he ran as independent and lost, people sighed, but did not think it would go far. When Reg Prentice, largely as a result of what he saw happen with Dick Taverne, crossed the aisle and joined the Tories, he was barracked as a traitor, but no one thought it would go further than that. In '81, when 10% of the Parliamentary Labour Party deserted to form the SDP, people thought it went too far and fiery speeches were made by men and women on the moderate and every left wing of the Labour Party regarding it. How and why did we then allow three MPs, scant six years later, to be deselected by the 'activists' into the waiting arms of the SDP? How did Arthur Scargill, discredited and disowned for taking the men put into his care off a cliff, could manipulate our Party into bringing down two sitting Members of Parliament? I did not understand it then and I do not understand it now."
♧ David Owen, Into the Maelstrom, (Macmillan, 1991):
"I failed to see then, and still fail to see now, how gaining three MPs is a bad thing."
♦ David Steel, Against Goliath: The David Steel Story, (Penguin Books, 1989):
"Two of the three seats were to be contested by Liberal candidates in the next general election. The local Liberal candidates had made great inroads in their communities and were confident they had a chance to exploit the rift between the local radicalized Labour Party selection committee and the ordinary prospective Labour voters. They were now to be cruelly ordered to stand aside for two men who had only joined our cause because they were about to lose their seats. It was not well received by the members of my Party."
♦ Paddy Ashdown, Battlegrounds, (HarperCollins, 2001):
"David Steel should be rightly regarded as among the best, if not the best, Liberal party leaders of the second half of the 20th century. He inherited a Party in disarray, with its just deposed Leader under suspicion of a murder for hire, and led it to its best Parliamentary showing since 1923. But in his eagerness to expand the frontiers of possibilities of the Liberal Party he may have at times neglected the core message of certain elements of the Party in favour of inter-Party unity within the Alliance. Social Democrats were given too much leeway in their intra-Alliance dealings and were treated very much as our equals, despite us outnumbering SDP two to one in the House of Commons. There were concerns he deferred to David Owen as much as he deferred to Roy Jenkins, and would defer further in particular to the rapidly approaching sticky area of Alliance Leadership in the event of a general election. One of the many, many reasons for our not as good as it should have been electoral showing in '83 was the blind assumption on the parts of senior leadership of the Alliance that Roy Jenkins was the natural leader, or in the bizarre parlance of the day: Prime Minister Designate. Time and time again in '83, David Steel proved to be the more dynamic leader and a better orator and persuader than Roy, yet when he dared to speak up about the possibility of taking Alliance Leadership, he was viciously verbally assaulted by Bill Rodgers and other Friends of Roy Jenkins for even broaching the subject. But if some case could be made that Roy Jenkins the Elder Statesman was the natural choice for Premiership when standing next to David Steel, no such case could be made with much objective conviction for Dr. David Owen. True, he had been a Foreign Secretary of some skill and he could be seen as a man partly responsible for the downfall of the Thatcher regime, but beyond that, what exactly were his qualifications to be Leader?"
♧ Mike Thomas, Separate Ways, (Duckworth, 2000):
"David Steel could not be counted to control 60 Liberal MPs. What on Earth made him and his fan club think he could be hold a divided country such as Britain in the turbulent '80s? I am reminded of a very clever ad someone once brought over from America. It simply flashed the name 'Spiro Agnew - Vice President' on a title card and had a man laugh at it off camera for some 15 seconds, followed by more subdued and sad chuckling. The same would have occurred had 'David Steel - Prime Minister' been splashed across the TV screens of Midlands and South of England. If we were to remain as an Alliance, there could only be one choice for Prime Ministerial candidate of it: Dr. David Owen."
♣ Bill Rodgers, Call Me What You Will, (Politico's, 2000):
"David Owen projected an image of being a man of ruthless determination while David Steel was credited with and derided for being a happy go lucky bearded pacifist who just had a shave. The truth is more complicated. David Owen was not as ruthless as he wanted to portray himself. He was driven far more by radical emotions than his admirers and reluctant allies would have liked. While David Steel was as capable of sticking a knife into any man, woman or child as anyone I ever met in Labour or SDP, Harold Wilson included. In '87 the rapidly approaching issue of who would be the Prime Minister of the Alliance, should we be so lucky in the polls come the hypothetical general election, was threatening to riven for personal reasons rather than political ones. The difference between an average SDP and Liberal voter was not large. The differences in activists were largely artificial. None of normal voters wanted to see a fistfight between two men who agreed on 85% of the issues at hand, (sadly, both men would dispute my percentage). I therefore proposed a Solomon like comprise, though it cost me the friendship of a man I regarded as my older brother in politics."
♣ Roy Jenkins, Centre Ground, (Harper Collins, 1991):
"The increasing rumours of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland having to call an early general election in Spring of 1987 to forestall the publication of a diary of a mistress of a disgraced Cabinet minister made sure there would be no Spring 1987 general election. The fear of being mocked for cowardice overrode the fear of the embarrassing revelations. Though I am sure it did wonders for the sales of Ms. Ozols's book. I myself have not read it, not out of prudishness or disapproval of low brow literature, but merely because I did not have to read it for the most sensational claims within it were splashed across the dailies in the week preceding the publication of the book, including the implication of an affair of a Cabinet minister with a fellow Conservative MP."
★ Azucena Ozols, My Alan Clark Diary, (Bantam Press, 1987):
"29 July, 1985. I found Al (Alan Clark) gloomy. I thought it was because he had been manhandled by Norman Tebbit during his gallant but silly defence of Margaret Thatcher over Europe and began to reassure him I still found him manly. He rather liked that word. But he shook his head and told me it was a different matter. 'The Lady asked me to find a spot for John Major at Treasury, but rumour has it the old boy is shagging Edwina Currie. Ghastly, isn't it? Most women age horribly when they get to the House and Edwina Currie was no great looker before she got into Parliament.'"
♤ Norman Lamont, Inside Westminster, (Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1996):
"Ms. Ozols could have easily excised the passage regarding Mr. Major from her book, but chose to leave it in and thereby wrecked a man's career. Given the perverse milieu in which she operated, she was not content to indulge in the baser instincts of the public with a tale about Jeffrey Archer or her own beau and instead went after a much more innocent man. Having worked with John Major I can tell you he is a man of great intellect and had, and still has, vast political potential. What went on between him and a woman other than his wife is a matter for him, his wife and the other woman. Instead it became tabloid fodder, for less than a day. A man's life was turned upside down and his political career stalled because a failed actress in search of someone to pay her rent attached herself to a lecherous self-indulgent over-promoted village idiot who said too much and thought too little, and the failed actress then parroted his words in the hopes of buying a much more sparkly outfit for her next societal outing and hoping to prolong her rapidly dwindling career of pseudo-fame."
♣ Dick Taverne, Vagabond, (Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1988):
"More than a few hopeful voices in the SDP thought John Major's resignation would have an impact on the local elections by reminding the voters of the The Sleaze of Tom King's ministry during its first year, but the results were muddled. We did better than expected, but not as well as we would have liked. Conservatives lost 100 councilors, which was in no way remarkable and Labour lost only 300. It did not surprise me that Mr. King elected not to have a general election in the Summer of '87 after such a result. It was very inconclusive and, it must be remembered, he had until June of '88 to hold an election."
★ Joe Trippi, Sleepless Summers, (Faber, 1998):
"May 1987 found me Deputy Political Director of the prohibitive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party of the United States of America Senator Gary Hart. Gary had charm, intellect and a deft touch for politics. He then proceeded to shoot himself in the testicles by daring the press to follow him around to disprove rumors of his infidelity. The press duly followed and found pictures of a gorgeous twenty-nine year old actress sitting on his married lap in front of a boat named, and I wish I was making this up, 'Monkey Business.' Following that implosion, I found myself without a candidate or a job. Oh and my marriage finally fell apart due to me being a terrible husband and even worse father. As I lay in bed and contemplated whether I should get up to use the bathroom or just go there and then I got a phone call from Philip Gould asking me to help look into the recent Tory successes and how to identify and combat the overall Tory strategy. Poor Philip did not realize he could have gotten me to work for free and actually agreed to pay me a decent rate to come in as a consultant, with first class accommodation. I agreed and then got up to go to the bathroom.
I found England to be a less gloomy place for Labour than during my last visit, but one in a state of high anxiety. The recent Parliamentary by-elections and local elections (think counties and districts) made them all twitchy and Philip asked me to review the recent Tory campaigns. Since he was paying me top dollar, uh, pound, I agreed and fortified with terribly weak Coke (British Coca Cola uses vegetable extract instead of good old fashioned American chemicals) I perused the Tory TV spots, radio commercials, posters and pamphlets and compared them to their earlier works in a nice office Philip Gould was renting. I was struck by how much weaker and less effective the new Conservative spots, radio commercials and posters were. The bulk of the work was done by the same company, Saatchi and Saatchi, but their '87 products lacked style. I later found out the man behind the earlier campaign had quit their company and started his own firm, which did not do him much good with King's Tories as he was seen as Mrs. Thatcher's man. Then I turned to pamphlets and leaflets. Here, the results were even more in Labour favor. The '83 batch were cruel and effective, the new batch felt dated and restrained. All in all, I found the Tory campaign material to be noticeably worse in '87 than in '83, based on the evidence before me. Bored, and getting paid by the hour, I then reviewed the Labour material. It had improved greatly.
I told Philip his campaign materials were fine and that of the opposition were not as good. He thanked me, hesitated and left the room. Bryan Gould called me in the next day into his terrible office at the Not Transport House and asked me to look into the rumors of the Tory Party hiring Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. I almost did a spit take. Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly is an American political consulting firm. They had many clients and many employees, but there was only one name on their roster all Democratic political junkies and professional campaigners feared, The Dark Lord of Political Arts: Lee Atwater. The shilling dropped. I was flown in at great expense to be the Labour's pet Yankee defender against the attacks of the alleged new Yankee pet of Tories - Lee Atwater. I laughed. First of all, asking me to stop Lee Atwater is like asking a man with a spoon to stop a man with a bazooka. I pride myself on being a smart and an effective campaigner, but Lee was the most ruthless campaigner in the history of American politics. He'd eat me alive and then spit out my bones into the faces of my loved ones while taunting them and drinking their tears. Second, Lee breathed and lived American politics, he had no interest in England. Third, the Tories had nothing to offer him. Money was nothing to Lee. He wanted power, and by 1987 he was sitting on the right hand of the Vice President of the United States of America and the presumptive presidential nominee of the Republican Party. All this I said with my usual lack of grace, was thanked for my 'tough and frank views' (code for, 'you did not tell us what we wanted to hear, jerk') and was once again paid on time. I returned to America to run the underfunded losing Democratic primary campaign of Dick Gephardt. It ended badly and to this day I am owed $89,000 for it. Also I discovered I had an onset of diabetes."
♥ Bryan Gould, Hard Labour, (Penguin Books, 1989):
"Philip (Gould) and I met with Neil (Kinnock), his wife, Giles (Radice), Charles Clarke and Denis (Healey) to discuss the results of the May '87 local elections. Though disappointed, Neil understood we were making progress for the upcoming general election. There was a robust discussion over the extent of our success. Neil remained upbeat throughout the postmortem and contributed to our discourse."
♥ Denis Healey, Silly Billies, (Penguin Books, 1990):
"As we were discussing the theme for the various posters we had earmarked to be distributed to the Labour Party headquarters of the constituencies at the next general election (which we felt was just around the corner), the conversation suddenly and quite unexpectedly veered into the effectiveness of having any posters at all. I do not recall who espoused which argument. The conversation was rather academic and more than a little silly, but reached the heights of passion due to it being an election matter. It is hard to explain to those of you who have not experienced the madness of a national campaign, but it has an unfortunate tendency to make the most mundane seem feverish. It was in the midst of this discussion that we experienced some heated outbursts, most of which I could not recall."
♥ Philip Gould, Confessions of an Adman, (HarperCollins, 1996):
"Denis kept banging on how much we needed posters to keep up morale in the Party, ignoring all attempts by Giles to get him to calm himself, when suddenly Neil cried out, 'None of this is of any use! It's not the posters! It's me! They're never going to elect someone like me!' Giles jumped to his feet and motioned for all to leave. We scuttled out of the room, leaving Neil alone with his wife and Giles. Denis cracked jokes about the Tories and talked football with us for fifteen minutes, pretending nothing had happened. Bryan got in on the act and did his best to joke through it. Charles Clarke mutely studied me during the whole of the ordeal, trying to discern how I would react to the outburst. I was shocked, but did not show it. I did not realize how much Neil's nerves were frayed. The door opened, and Neil strolled out, all smiles, followed by his wife and the near always placid Giles. Charles walked up to me and hissed with all the considerable menace he could exude, 'This never happened. Understood?' I nodded. But I did not forget. The strain of a near-election had caused a near collapse in my Party's Leader. What would a sustained election bring out?"
★ Alastair John Campbell, The Claret Revolution, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):
"In the anticipation of the Spring '87 election which never came, three constituency Labour parties deselected their MPs. John Forrester of Stoke-on-Trent North was deselected due to age in favor of a London based radical (Joan Walley). Michael McGuire of Makerfield fell due to his support for the miners who elected to work during the Scargill Strike. The other casualty of the National Union of Mineworkers was Alec Woodall of Hemsworth who supported the police during their clashes with the Scargill strikers. All three promptly defected to the SDP."
♥ Joe Ashton, My Labour, My Party, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993):
"In '72, when Dick Taverne ran into trouble with his local Labour Party, no one paid attention for no one thought it would go far. When he was deselected, much head shaking resulted, but no one thought it would go far. When he ran as independent and lost, people sighed, but did not think it would go far. When Reg Prentice, largely as a result of what he saw happen with Dick Taverne, crossed the aisle and joined the Tories, he was barracked as a traitor, but no one thought it would go further than that. In '81, when 10% of the Parliamentary Labour Party deserted to form the SDP, people thought it went too far and fiery speeches were made by men and women on the moderate and every left wing of the Labour Party regarding it. How and why did we then allow three MPs, scant six years later, to be deselected by the 'activists' into the waiting arms of the SDP? How did Arthur Scargill, discredited and disowned for taking the men put into his care off a cliff, could manipulate our Party into bringing down two sitting Members of Parliament? I did not understand it then and I do not understand it now."
♧ David Owen, Into the Maelstrom, (Macmillan, 1991):
"I failed to see then, and still fail to see now, how gaining three MPs is a bad thing."
♦ David Steel, Against Goliath: The David Steel Story, (Penguin Books, 1989):
"Two of the three seats were to be contested by Liberal candidates in the next general election. The local Liberal candidates had made great inroads in their communities and were confident they had a chance to exploit the rift between the local radicalized Labour Party selection committee and the ordinary prospective Labour voters. They were now to be cruelly ordered to stand aside for two men who had only joined our cause because they were about to lose their seats. It was not well received by the members of my Party."
♦ Paddy Ashdown, Battlegrounds, (HarperCollins, 2001):
"David Steel should be rightly regarded as among the best, if not the best, Liberal party leaders of the second half of the 20th century. He inherited a Party in disarray, with its just deposed Leader under suspicion of a murder for hire, and led it to its best Parliamentary showing since 1923. But in his eagerness to expand the frontiers of possibilities of the Liberal Party he may have at times neglected the core message of certain elements of the Party in favour of inter-Party unity within the Alliance. Social Democrats were given too much leeway in their intra-Alliance dealings and were treated very much as our equals, despite us outnumbering SDP two to one in the House of Commons. There were concerns he deferred to David Owen as much as he deferred to Roy Jenkins, and would defer further in particular to the rapidly approaching sticky area of Alliance Leadership in the event of a general election. One of the many, many reasons for our not as good as it should have been electoral showing in '83 was the blind assumption on the parts of senior leadership of the Alliance that Roy Jenkins was the natural leader, or in the bizarre parlance of the day: Prime Minister Designate. Time and time again in '83, David Steel proved to be the more dynamic leader and a better orator and persuader than Roy, yet when he dared to speak up about the possibility of taking Alliance Leadership, he was viciously verbally assaulted by Bill Rodgers and other Friends of Roy Jenkins for even broaching the subject. But if some case could be made that Roy Jenkins the Elder Statesman was the natural choice for Premiership when standing next to David Steel, no such case could be made with much objective conviction for Dr. David Owen. True, he had been a Foreign Secretary of some skill and he could be seen as a man partly responsible for the downfall of the Thatcher regime, but beyond that, what exactly were his qualifications to be Leader?"
♧ Mike Thomas, Separate Ways, (Duckworth, 2000):
"David Steel could not be counted to control 60 Liberal MPs. What on Earth made him and his fan club think he could be hold a divided country such as Britain in the turbulent '80s? I am reminded of a very clever ad someone once brought over from America. It simply flashed the name 'Spiro Agnew - Vice President' on a title card and had a man laugh at it off camera for some 15 seconds, followed by more subdued and sad chuckling. The same would have occurred had 'David Steel - Prime Minister' been splashed across the TV screens of Midlands and South of England. If we were to remain as an Alliance, there could only be one choice for Prime Ministerial candidate of it: Dr. David Owen."
♣ Bill Rodgers, Call Me What You Will, (Politico's, 2000):
"David Owen projected an image of being a man of ruthless determination while David Steel was credited with and derided for being a happy go lucky bearded pacifist who just had a shave. The truth is more complicated. David Owen was not as ruthless as he wanted to portray himself. He was driven far more by radical emotions than his admirers and reluctant allies would have liked. While David Steel was as capable of sticking a knife into any man, woman or child as anyone I ever met in Labour or SDP, Harold Wilson included. In '87 the rapidly approaching issue of who would be the Prime Minister of the Alliance, should we be so lucky in the polls come the hypothetical general election, was threatening to riven for personal reasons rather than political ones. The difference between an average SDP and Liberal voter was not large. The differences in activists were largely artificial. None of normal voters wanted to see a fistfight between two men who agreed on 85% of the issues at hand, (sadly, both men would dispute my percentage). I therefore proposed a Solomon like comprise, though it cost me the friendship of a man I regarded as my older brother in politics."
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