As the Labour government seeks to establish its credentials, it is still far too early to identify which of its top team will end up having the most impact on the political culture of the United Kingdom. If Professor Sir Vernon Bogdanor’s latest book – Making the Weather, Six Politicians Who Changed Modern Britain – is anything to go by, it will not necessarily be from those holding one of the great offices of state. Making the Weather is a series of thought-provoking analytical essays, definitely not potted biographies, that examine the careers and influence of six very different politicians. Three of them are from the Left – Aneurin Bevan, Roy Jenkins and Tony Benn; and three from the Right – Enoch Powell, Keith Joseph and Nigel Farage. None of them achieved the premiership and only Bevan and Jenkins were influential legislators. All of them, though, Bogdanor argues, have had a more lasting impact on Britain than many Prime Ministers.
For Bogdanor, what unites his six protagonists are their skills as communicators and their abilities to influence and teach others. The inspiration for this theme, as Bogdanor freely admits in his introduction, comes from Winston Churchill and his collection of short biographies of famous people, Great Contemporaries, published in 1937. In Churchill’s essay on Joseph Chamberlain, whom he regarded as one of the most influential politicians of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, despite never holding one of the great offices of state, he described him as a politician ‘who made the weather’.
It is not surprising that Bogdanor has included Aneurin Bevan as he was undoubtedly one of the political giants of the post-war Attlee government, a deeply committed democratic socialist and a powerful and persuasive speaker. His supreme achievement was to establish the NHS and embed two principles into the political culture that still surround it: firstly, that health care should be free for all when they needed it; secondly, that the funding of the service should always come from taxation. These principles have remained at the centre of any debate about reform of the NHS ever since and will no doubt feature in any discussion of whatever plans for improvement Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, starts to develop.
Turning to the Right of politics Bogdanor starts with Enoch Powell, another politician with no significant policy or institutional achievement behind him. A champion of English nationalism and the sovereignty of Parliament and a powerful forensic speaker, his obsession with immigration saw him end his career in what was, in effect, political exile. His notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech made him persona non grata even in his own party. For Bogdanor, his impact on British politics was to make any balanced discussions of immigration immeasurably more difficult, even for those on the centre ground, for fear of being labelled racist. Powell may have had a brilliant mind but as Bogdanor makes clear it was one not always tempered with good judgement.
Roy Jenkins, pictured in 1977 (photo courtesy of WikiCommons)
Next in line is Roy Jenkins. He is Bogdanor’s favourite, mostly it would seem for his personal charm, ability to laugh at himself and lack of animosity. He, like Bevan, was also successful in government when as Home Secretary he liberalised the laws on abortion and homosexuality. His career eventually foundered over the issue of Europe as he supported membership of the EEC (as the EU was known then) at a time when Labour was actively opposed. Great communicator though he was, Bogdanor notes that he was more persuasive with the elite of the Labour Party than with the wider membership and this perhaps helps explain his considerable success with the Brussels bureaucracy when President of the EU in helping develop the push towards monetary union.
Sir Keith Joseph, despite his ministerial experiences under four Prime Ministers, was far more a thinker than a doer. Bogdanor has included him because, in his view, he changed the language of politics through the influence of his ideas and, in particular, for his championing of the free market. He not only had a decisive influence over the political and economic thinking of Margaret Thatcher, with whom he had set up the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974, but also, somewhat ironically, on the development of New Labour, its abandonment of Clause 4 and more open attitude towards the private sector under the leadership of Tony Blair.
Tony Benn speaking at the anti war demonstration in Hyde Park, London February 15 2003. (PA Photo by Lindsey Parnaby, courtesy of Flickr)
Bogdanor’s final man of the Left is Tony Benn. In some ways, he is an unusual choice as he does not seem to have left behind any truly decisive mark on politics, whether ideological, cultural or practical. Bogdanor almost admits that is the case. He seems to have included him for his temporary influence on Labour in the early 1980s and his support for the disastrous leadership of Michael Foot, but more especially for his deep commitment to participatory democracy, a commitment that was reflected in his persistent advocacy for the introduction of referenda and his success in securing the involvement of party members in the election of the party leader. Unlike Jenkins, Benn was more popular and persuasive with the party beyond Westminster than with the party within. He eventually ended his career as a diarist and national treasure on shows such as Any Questions.
Bogdanor’s final candidate, Nigel Farage, is still on the pitch and seeking to replace the Conservative Party as the principal party of the Right. Bogdanor has included Farage because, however his career may yet develop, without him, Brexit, possibly the most important foreign policy decision since the Second World War, would not have happened. Whatever one’s personal views of Farage, there is no denying, as Bogdanor points out, the scale of this achievement given his position as a political outsider, an insurgent beyond the gates of Westminster, operating without the support of the organisation, finance and national reach enjoyed by the three main political parties.
Nigel Farage speaking at Trago Mills, 2024 (photo courtesy of Flickr)
As with any list there is always scope for debate about the choice of protagonists. That said, Bogdanor not only exposes the strengths and weaknesses of all his six protagonists but also uses them to illuminate the changing landscape of British political culture and the complexity of politics. On the one hand, how easily the daily grind of bureaucracy and political manoeuvre can get in the way of practical achievement, on the other, how cultural and ideological developments can often have unexpected long-term impacts on the political landscape and, not least, the extent to which personality can hinder or advance a cause. This thoughtful and well-written book is aimed at the general reader but will appeal most especially to anyone interested in politics.
Making the Weather: Six Politicians Who Changed Modern Britain by Vernon Bogdanor is available now in hardback from Haus Publishing, priced £22. For more information, please visit www.hauspublishing.com.
Header photo: Aneurin Bevan on the first day of the National Health Service, 5 July 1948 at Park Hospital, Davyhulme, near Manchester (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
