Ted Heath’s arrogance

Lee David Evans has an interesting CAPX piece on how Tory leader Ted Heath’s arrogance made Thatcherism possible. The whole piece is quite short and well worth reading as a reminder of political leaders and how remarkably poor they can be at leadership.


How Ted Heath’s arrogance made Thatcherism possible

• Despite losing three elections, Ted Heath refused to step down as Tory leader
• For those who wanted to oust Heath, there was no alternative to Thatcher
• Had Ted Heath resigned sooner, Margaret Thatcher would not have seized control

Heath had fought four elections and lost three of them. It’s unimaginable today that a Conservative leader with such an unenviable record would try and stay in post; ever since, every election defeat has been followed by the hasty exit of the leader. But not Heath. He believed that only he could lead the Conservative party through the trials ahead and nobody, not the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, nor even his closest friends in politics, could convince him otherwise.

Such intransigence was not out of character. Since being elected Tory leader in 1965, Heath had become distant and aloof from the MPs whose support he needed to command. As one of Heath’s biographers, John Campbell, so crushingly put it: ‘Tory MPs who had been willing to put up with Heath’s remoteness and rudeness so long as he was Prime Minister felt no obligation of personal loyalty to such a graceless boor when he began to look like a loser.’ Ouch.