The Joy of Six 1477

Martin Parr looks at successful and unsuccessful attempts to depose a prime minister: "Labour, significantly, has never toppled a prime minister. It’s not in the culture of so cooperativist a party: there’s no equivalent of the 1922 Committee. And whenever it might have happened, the challenger blinked: Herbert Morrison with Attlee; Roy Jenkins with Wilson; David Miliband with Brown; Wes Streeting may have just joined the roster of the rueful."

Sumaiya Motara on the brutal contest for low-paid work: "It’s like The Hunger Games, but you’re all trying to get a job in a shop where you’re going to be folding clothes all day, for just over minimum wage."

"The case took a dramatic turn in November when Erin’s teenage son ... ran away from his father’s home and hired his own solicitor. After a period in foster care and a series of urgent hearings, he was later reunited with his mother for their first Christmas together in six years." Hannah Summers reports on a hearing that highlights the issue of unregulated psychologists appearing in court as expert witnesses.

Some major news organisations are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. They are doing so largely out of concern that generative AI companies are using it as a back door for large-scale scraping. Mark Graham argues that these concerns, though understandable, are unfounded.

"Whilst Landlord continues to power its way across the country ... it has to be hoped that the company doesn't forget its roots and the locality that sustained it for much of its existence." Real Ale, Real Music visits Keighley, home of the brewer Timothy Taylor.

Robert Hugill praises the new Opera North production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes.

Tony Benn: Nigel Farage's John the Baptist?

#OTD 1975. Cabinet Ministers Roy Jenkins and Tony Benn debate leaving the EEC on TV.

Jenkins argues that Britain will have no say over how trade rules are made.

Benn argues that the country would get the trade deal it wanted “because we are their very best customer”. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/lfhSYxYV5q

— Tides of History (@labour_history) June 2, 2024

This video was posted on Twitter earlier today, and it's uncanny how close Tony Benn's arguments against Britain remaining in what was then the European Economic Community are to those used by Leave in the 2016 referendum.

He comes over as Nigel Farage's John the Baptist, while the slightly amused reference to Italy wanting to sell its wine is pure Boris Johnson. 

You may say that Benn's wish to leave room for protectionism is a world away from the economic beliefs of Brexit's most powerful backers, but many Brexit voters thought they were voting for protectionism.

But then I have taken the odd potshot at the myth of St Tony over the years.

In 2009 I devoted a my Liberal Democrat News column House Points to the hobby, pointing out that the pirate radio ships of the Sixties had gone from being a threat to the British way of life to the subject of warm nostalgia:

You would not know it from Richard Curtis’s recent film, but the minister who sank the pirate ships was Tony Benn - or Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as he then called himself.

Getting into high gear, I continued:

Do the sweet young things who hang upon his words about global warming know that when a minister in the 1970s he forced through the construction of the coal-burning Drax power station?

Or take his party piece. There are five questions we should ask politicians: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?”

That is not what he said when he met Saddam Hussein in 2003: 

"I have 10 grandchildren and in my family there is English, Scottish, American, French, Irish, Jewish, Indian, Muslim blood, and for me politics is about their future, their survival. And I wonder whether you could say something yourself directly through this interview to the peace movement of the world that might help to advance the cause they have in mind?"

But it has to be admitted that Benn is good at getting his points across. Roy Jenkins does not say much in this clip, so it may be unfair to judge him on it, but there are two problems with what he does say.

The first is that accent. As Nye Bevan is supposed to have said when it was suggested to him that Jenkins was lazy:

"Lazy? Lazy? How can a boy from Abersychan who acquired an accent like that be lazy?"

The second is something that is endemic on the left: too much abstraction. I'm sure the average voter could quickly be brought to understand the concept of "pooled sovereignty", but I'm not convinced they will understand it without explanation. So maybe Jenkins needed to find simpler language in the first place.

I'm reminded of the time, at the height of the campaign for a second referendum, when someone decided that having Stephen Fry discoursing on "forced perspective" was the way to convert Leavers to our cause.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, as they say in the European Union.

Major Healey and Captain Jenkins at the 1945 Labour Conference

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Major Denis Healey and Captain Roy Jenkins photographed on the seafront with fellow delegates during the Labour Party conference in Blackpool, May 1945. This photo was published in the 9 June 1945 issue of Picture Post.

A little on the wartime careers on their wartime careers from Wikipedia.

Denis Healey

After graduation, Healey served in the Second World War as a gunner in the Royal Artillery before being commissioned as a second lieutenant in April 1941. Serving with the Royal Engineers, he saw action in the North African campaign, the Allied invasion of Sicily (1943) and the Italian campaign (1943–1945) and was the military landing officer ("beach master") for the British assault brigade at Anzio in 1944. He was twice mentioned in dispatches during this campaign.

Healey became an MBE in 1945. He left the service with the rank of Major. He declined an offer to remain in the army, with the rank of Lieutenant colonel, as part of the team researching the history of the Italian campaign under Colonel David Hunt. He also decided against taking up a senior scholarship at Balliol, which might have led to an academic career.

Roy Jenkins

During the Second World War, Jenkins received his officer training at Alton Towers and was posted to the 55th West Somerset Yeomanry at West Lavington, Wiltshire. Through the influence of his father, in April 1944, Jenkins was sent to Bletchley Park to work as a codebreaker; while there he befriended the historian Asa Briggs.

Farewell to Shirley Williams

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I was very sorry to hear of Shirley Williams' death. Her warm, sensible, conversational style reminds us of what has been lost from British politics in recent years.

Her Guardian obituary speculates that she might have made a more attractive leader of the nascent SDP than Roy Jenkins, which makes a lot of sense.

Yet I cannot remember this possibility being talked about at the time. Put it down to sexism.

It also worth pointing out that Shirley Williams was not an insipid moderate. 

In her Labour days she was seen as being in the mainstream of the party and received a lot of trade union support in its internal elections.

Her decision to leave was down to her strong opposition to Trotskyism and belief that it had no place in the Labour Party.

Again, the existence of a politician with principles and deeply held beliefs reminds us of what we have lost.

Patrick O'Flynn joins the political undead of the SDP

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The most unexpected news story of the day must be Patrick O'Flynn MEP's decision to leave Ukip and join the SDP.

In his statement, O'Flynn says: "like many on the communitarian wing of the party, I have decided to join the resurgent SDP".

I am afraid that resurgence has passed me by, though there are a few pro-SDP Twitter accounts around.

And Sam Watts, who was the Ukip candidate for Corby at last year's general election, joined the SDP shortly afterwards. He is also a town councillor in Burton Latimer.

There's even someone on Twitter called William Clouston, who claims to be the party's leader.

What I can't find is evidence that anyone has been elected under the SDP banner for years, though they did lose a council seat in Bridlington to (ironically) Ukip as recently as 2014.

I was always a bit of an SDPsceptic, and it did come and go remarkably quickly. But it's sad to see its corpse being revived by disaffected Ukippers when support for the European Union was one of the motives for setting up the party in the first place.

That rumbling sound you can hear must be Roy Jenkins turning in his grave.

Theresa May is the opposite of Harold Macmillan

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Writing about Julian Critchley after visiting his grave at Wistanstow, I quoted an interview he gave to Naim Attallah:

I had two heroes in politics: Macmillan and Roy Jenkins. Macmillan, because he controlled to a very great extent Britain’s decline in power and was responsible for our adjustment in straitened circumstances – something he managed despite a party of fools. 

My admiration for Roy Jenkins was based on the fact that as a young Labour MP he would advocate the cause of Europe in cross-party meetings, and he advocated brilliantly.

Leaving Roy to one side, it strikes me that Theresa May is doing the precise opposite of what Macmillan did. She still has a party of fools to contend with, but she is allowing them to indulge their fantasies of glorious isolation or Empire 2.0.

Macmillan came to power because of Suez. Will it take a similar national humiliation to bring the Conservative leadership to its senses?

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Staring back at Theresa May

The new Liberator has arrived, which means it is time to spend another week with Lord Bonkers. Right from the off, he takes us to the heart of the debate on Europe.

Monday

I was resting my eyes in the Lords; when I opened them, there was the prime minister In Our House. What immortal rind! And she was staring at me. I wasn’t having that so I stared right back. When that didn’t work I went through my full gamut of faces: the lovesick Frisian; the angry walrus; Roy Jenkins on the lavatory.

That, I thought, had done the trick when she hurried out, but her place was taken by a Cabinet colleague. It was clear that a more organised approach was needed, so I took a party of Liberal Democrat peers (you may have noticed we are not exactly short of them) off to the tearoom for a spot of training in Hard Stares and pulling the aforementioned faces (though the Jenkins is not one for novices).

I am proud to announce that, after I had left for home, one of my pupils made a junior minister cry.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Margaret Thatcher was right about referendums

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Perhaps the late Lord Attlee was right when he said that the referendum was a device of dictators and demagogues.

That was Margaret Thatcher speaking in a 1975 Commons debate as Harold Wilson called a referendum on Europe to paper over Labour's divisions on Europe.

Earlier in the debate she had quoted a letter that Roy Jenkins had written to The Times in 1972, which shows why that observation was in her mind:

"It may be argued ... that the EEC referendum would be a once-for-all operation. The device would never be used again. Who can possibly say that? 

Once the principle of the referendum has been introduced into British politics, it will not rest with any one party to put a convenient limit to its use. And most history shows, as Clem Attlee pointed out with terse force in 1945, that it is a splendid weapon for demagogues and dictators."

The referendum on Scottish independence and on British membership of the European Union have shown that Attlee was right, Roy Jenkins was right and Margaret Thatcher was right.

One of the strengths of British Conservatism has always been that it had little time for Continental abstractions like "the Will of the People".

All that has been cast aside and you will now find Conservatives condemning parliamentary scrutiny of the executive and the independence of the judiciary - the very things they are meant to believe in - because they threaten the unopposed implementation of the Europe referendum's decision,

We know that Ukip doesn't like anything about Britain except its past. Now the Conservatives are going the same way.

No, I am not a new convert to Mrs Thatchers' view: I wrote a post entitled Scribbling on the constitution: A referendum on Europe was always a bad idea as long ago as June, when everyone expected Remain to win.

And back in 2011 I wrote an article for Liberal Democrat News saying the party should stop calling for referendums on Europe, in part because of their damaging effect on British politics:

For years the main parties have engaged in something close to a conspiracy. The issue of Europe has been taken out of general elections, with the promise that it will be decided through a referendum. Those referendums never take place. The result has been an infantilisation of debate on Europe, as politicians are allowed to take up self-indulgent, extreme positions they know they will never have to defend to the electorate. 

This process has been bad for us Liberal Democrats, encouraging the idea that all we need do to prosper is not offend anybody and deliver lots and lots of leaflets. And it has been bad for democracy as a whole. Why should voters feel enthusiastic about Westminster when their representatives avoid talking about one of the most important issues facing the country?

They should have listened to me and Maggie.

Six of the Best 518

Why did the pollsters get it so wrong at the general election? A special extended edition of the Polling Matters podcast tries to find out.

"It is a strategy that ignores the potential that is in 100% of today’s labor force, 98% of next year’s, and a huge number of people who will be around for the next half-century." Ricardo Hausmann questions the orthodoxy that education is the key to economic growth.

David Hencke says cutting councillors in Newcastle upon Tyne is a dangerous move to dilute democracy.

 The Labour leadership election of 1976 was contested by Tony Benn, Jim Callaghan, Anthony Crosland, Michael Foot, Denis Healey and Roy Jenkins. Alwyn W. Turner looks back.

Elizabeth Day talks to Alistair McGowan about his experience of portraying Jimmy Savile in a new play.

Rebecca Mead on the appeal of Middlemarch.

Six of the Best 461

"The debate until now has been civilized - if shallow, dishonest and misguided. Divorces usually only get nasty when the lawyers are called in. If we call in the lawyers on September 19th, you can bet that there will be a backlash - much that we have taken for granted will be lost and bitterness and rancour will inevitably emerge - even in the most civilized divorces much is regretted." Cicero's Songs pleads with his fellow countrymen to reject Scottish independence.

Elwyn Watkins on Liberal Democrat Voice describes how one community in Rochdale took control to protect its children and young people.

Freethinking Economist makes some surprising discoveries in a biography of Roy Jenkins.

Who was Captain Swing? LibrarianShipwreck explains.

"Cook's presence at the top of the order - at least a Cook as demonstrably out of form as this - is impeding their hopes of progress." George Dobell on Cricinfo calls for changes to England's one-day international side.

Talking of cricket, the Lord's site shows us some weird and wonderful items from the MCC Museum (including Bob Wyatt's hip joint).

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The party of Rasputin

Thursday

I was unable to stay for last night’s debate, having already agreed to give the after-dinner speech at a fundraiser for the Home for Distressed Canvassers in Herne Bay. When I finally catch up with the proceedings on the electric internet, I am somewhat disappointed. It is not just that my orchard doughty is nowhere to be seen: it is the way Clegg puts over one of my best lines.

Yesterday afternoon the 12-year-old PPE graduates were desperate for jokes, so I told them the one about Roy Jenkins and the lavatory brush that won me a standing ovation at three consecutive Liberal Assemblies during the Alliance Years. They didn’t like it, not even after I had told them who Roy Jenkins was, and I eventually fell to reminiscing about my successful campaign in 1906.

I recalled for them a public meeting at the Bonkers’ Arms where I contrasted our own rough conviviality and fellowship with the effete manners of my Conservative opponent, who was known to be a frequent visitor to the Tsar’s court in St Petersburg.

"We are the party of inn," I said, gesturing at the familiar beams and faces around me, "and they are the party of Rasputin." Clegg, as you will no doubt have seen for yourself, used my line, but I am afraid I am obliged to say that he foozled it.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Floreat Estonia
• The disappearance of the 11:15 from Nottingham London Road Lower Level
• Behind the scenes at Clegg vs Farage

Austin Mitchell, Europe and Brian Clough

Austin Mitchell has announced that he will retire as MP for Great Grimsby at next year's general election.

The BBC describes him as a "veteran" MP, but I remember when he was first elected to parliament.

It was April 1977 and Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives were carrying all before them. On the same day, 28 April, they won a by-election in Ashfield, a seat which Labour had won with a majority of 22,915 at the previous election.

But Austin Mitchell managed to retain Grimsby for Labour, though the majority he was defending only 6,982.

One reason for this was the different reasons for the by-elections. Grimsby was called because of the death of Tony Crosland, who was the foreign secretary and a respected constituency MP. Ashfield was called because the sitting MP, David Marquand, had gone off to work for Roy Jenkins in Brussels.

Mitchell was also helped by his fame as a local television presenter, but the chief reason for his victory against the odds was the campaign he ran.

In a town that has been badly affected by the common fisheries policy, he ran an impassioned campaign against Britain's membership of the European Economic Community.

Not that this was less than two years after the British people had voted 2:1 to remain in the EEC in a national referendum.

It is a lesson to those who argue that a referendum would settle the question of Britain's membership of the European Union "once and for all". And it also supports the idea that UKIP's natural supporters today are Labour voters who have seen no benefit from globalisation.

Though his man of the people act was part of Mitchell's appeal in the by-election, he had spent eight years in New Zealand lecturing in History and Sociology.

In the late 1960s he joined Yorkshire Television were his finest hour was this confrontation between Don Revie and Brian Clough.

Trivial Fact of the Day with Roy Jenkins

Owen Hatherley has a good article in today's Guardian laying bare the shrinking size of modern houses and calling for a return to the 'Parker Morris' standards of the 1960s.

Sir Parker Morris was the author of the 1961 government report Homes for Today and Tomorrow. He called for minimum space standards for new accommodation, and these became mandatory in new towns in 1967 and in all public-sector housing two years later.

The Parker Morris standards were abolished by the new Conservative government in 1980. Thanks, Maggie.

When I became a councillor later in that decade, the phrase "Parker Morris standards" was still on the lips of council officers. Usually, this was in the context of pointing out that some new shared-ownership scheme we were looking at would have been illegal under them.

Sir Parker Morris was the town clerk of Westminster and is remembered in the name of the Parker Morris Hall, which is part of the Abbey Centre there.

A reader asks with mounting impatience: This is all very interesting, I suppose, but where does Roy Jenkins come into it?

Liberal England replies: Sir Parker's daughter Jennifer married Roy Jenkins in 1945.

Thomas Williams and the Hammersmith South by-election of 1949

The London Sound Survey site carries a wide selection of archive sound recordings and other resources dealing with the history of the city.

Among them is a recording from the Hammersmith South by-election of 1949. It carries the victor's speech by Thomas Williams, who had just held the seat for Labour. Note that he does not thank the police, as now appears obligatory.

Williams went on to hold seat at the 1950 and 1951 general elections. Following boundary changes, Williams won the new Barons Court seat, defeating Sir Keith Joseph by 913 votes.

In 1959 he lost Barons Court to the Conservatives, with a certain S.H.J.A. Knott coming third as an Independent Liberal. Simon Knott is a name that will be familiar to London Liberals of a certain age.

But that was not the end of Thomas Williams. Two years later Edith Sumerskill, the Labour MP for Warrington, accepted a peerage and stood down from the Commons. Williams won the subsequent by-election and remained MP for the town for the next 20 years.

In 1981 he was appointed a circuit judge and stood down from the Commons himself. This caused the famous Warrington by-election that Roy Jenkins narrowly failed to win for the SDP.

Thanks to @floratrype on Twitter, who alerted me to the London Sound Survey site by tweeting this rather wonderful Latin lesson from Eltham College in 1938.

The Liberal Democrats at Pooh Corner

If you were using the Liberal Democrats to cast a dramatisation of Winnie-the-Pooh, Vince Cable would be Eeyore and Paddy Ashdown would surely be Tigger. Ashdown may be advancing into his eighth decade, but the former leader bounces with energy and optimism, even when contemplating the prospects for his party.

writes Andrew Rawnsley, opening an interview with Paddy Ashdown in tomorrow's Observer.

So if Vince is Eeyore and Paddy is Tigger, what about the rest of A.A. Milne's characters?

We lost our Wol when Roy Jenkins died, though I suppose Ming Campbell comes somewhere close today.

And Nick Clegg must be Rabbit, with his busyness and confidence in his own judgement. He even has an office of Friends and Relations to brief against those who question his leadership.

But who are Pooh and Piglet and Kanga and Roo? And where is Christopher Robin?

What Paddy Ashdown said about winning Yeovil in 1983 - in 1983

Liberal Democrat Voice tells us that a chapter of Paddy Ashdown’s bestselling autobiography A Fortunate Life has been released as a free download.

Helen Duffett writes there:

It’s called 1983 – The Winning of Yeovil, and as I wrote in 2009: 

MP also stands for Military Precision, so it’s no surprise that Paddy Ashdown’s campaign to become MP for Yeovil was long on discipline and short on creature comforts. 

If you haven’t packed a book for the train to Conference yet, 1983 – The Winning of Yeovil is vital reading for all Liberal Democrat campaigners. And as is typical of the Chair of the Party’s 2015 General Election campaign, Paddy has plenty to inspire and inform, as well as entertain.

I can beat that. I can tell you what Paddy Ashdown said about winning Yeovil in 1983 in 1983.

A rummage in a dusty cupboard produces Liberator 135, which was the issue on sale at the Liberal Party's 1983 Assembly in Harrogate.

My name is not listed among the editorial collective, but I am pretty sure this is the first issue of the magazine I was involved with. The paste up took place at the party's offices at the National Liberal Club, and I was young and radical and out of my head on Cow Gum and cheap Italian Letraset.

Liberator 135 contains an interview with Paddy Ashdown, the newly elected MP for Yeovil, by Alan Leaman. And here is an extract...

What was the impact of the Alliance? 

In the early days it was bad. The message of the Alliance got across very imperfectly to people in my constituency. Where Liberals had captured ground the advent of the Alliance has actually caused them to lose votes. I reckon the net loss (and we could measure the same wards in 1979/80/81/82/83) was two per cent, maybe three. 

There were two factors involved. First of all was the unpopularity of Roy Jenkins. We found that time after time on the doorstep, quite unjustifiably, but I suspect him to be the most unpopular British politician after Tony Benn. It was quite irrational and very unfair, but it was there, starkly during the general election. 

The second is that those largely Labour voters who we had won over somehow perceived the Alliance as going halfway back to Labour. Nobody actually said that to me, but that's my rationalisaton. That was a definite factor and one of the reasons why we played a high profile Liberal campaign: we did mention the Alliance but we put ourselves forward as Liberals.

In the general election I suspect we came out even in the end, because while it was losing votes in the first two weeks of the campaign, as soon as we started to lift in the opinion polls those reservations suddenly vanished. In the last week of the campaign we had nobody saying they were worried about the Alliance. By the time of polling day it was nil benefit, nil loss.

Liberator is still going strong, of course, and these days even has an electric blog. I miss the Cow Gum though.

It was 31 years ago today: Roy Jenkins and the Glasgow Hillhead by-election

Dr Alun Wyburn-Powell reminds us that today, as well as being my birthday, is the 31st anniversary of Roy Jenkins victory for the SDP in the Glasgow Hillhead by-election.

Which gives me an excuse for redeploying a favourite anecdote, first borrowed from Mr Eugenides (whose blog is now invitation only).

He wrote:

One of my all-time favourite political anecdotes concerns the 1982 Hillhead by election, for which the newly formed SDP selected their leader, Roy Jenkins, who had not hitherto been renowned for his connections with the city. 

Strolling around the west end of Glasgow, the urbane Jenkins entered a newsagent's and, sighting the Asian shopkeeper, went to proffer a handshake. "So, how long have you been here, then?", asked Jenkins, to which the owner replied evenly, "Longer than you".

Julian Critchley's grave at Wistanstow

The churchyard at Wistanstow is probably not the site of the martyrdom of St Wystan, but it does contain the grave of one of my favourite MPs.

Julian Critichley sat for Rochester and Chatham between 1959 and 1964, and for Aldershot between 1970 and 1997. As his Guardian obituary by John Biffen suggested:

The broken Westminster service between 1964 and 1970 was crucial to Critchley's political career. He was a liberal Tory, supporting one-nation social policies, membership of the European Community, and a defence policy based on Nato and a nuclear strategy. He would have been a natural and able young ally for Edward Heath, campaigning for him against the Conservative right, which was increasingly hostile to the Rome Treaty and current levels of public spending. No one can say how Critchley would have handled his opportunities had he remained in Westminster between 1964 and 1970 ... 

He was always vulnerable because of his irreverent humour, which could lead to incautious and overt disrespect. If he had been able to reign back this, and with application surely he could, then opposition service during the parliaments of the 1960s could have ensured office in the 1970-74 Heath administration. This was not to be. Soon, he was politically marginalised by the triumph of Margaret Thatcher. He doubted her policies and even more the self-righteous way in which they were promoted.

His political ambitions thwarted, Critchley became increasingly popular as a journalist and broadcaster on politics.

Critchley's biography A Bag of Boiled Sweets is one of the most human political memoirs I know and also expresses his love of Shropshire.

He also gave a revealing interview to Naim Attallah:

I had two heroes in politics: Macmillan and Roy Jenkins. Macmillan, because he controlled to a very great extent Britain’s decline in power and was responsible for our adjustment in straitened circumstances – something he managed despite a party of fools. My admiration for Roy Jenkins was based on the fact that as a young Labour MP he would advocate the cause of Europe in cross-party meetings, and he advocated brilliantly.

What happens if there is a hung parliament?

Martin Kettle has an interesting piece in today's Guardian looking at what might happen after a hung parliament:

The idea canvassed by Armstrong and Lord Crowther-Hunt in 1974 that the Queen might consult some national elders – Harold Macmillan and Manny Shinwell were suggested – and might even invite Willie Whitelaw or Roy Jenkins to form a government was fanciful even then.

Today such a "Miliband option", as it is optimistically dubbed, would be even more for the birds. If Brown was persuaded to step down in order to enable Labour to govern, there is no way the palace could invite any Labour politician except Harriet Harman to form a government.

In earlier times, private soundings might have produced consensus prime ministers like Churchill or Douglas-Home. Today parties are encumbered with more rules. If Brown goes, Harman automatically becomes Labour leader until a party leadership election is held. The Miliband option is a non-starter.

In short, the idea of a Miliband option is bananas.

Mr Eugenides remembers the Glasgow Hillhead byelection

Mr Eugenides writes this morning:

One of my all-time favourite political anecdotes concerns the 1982 Hillhead by election, for which the newly formed SDP selected their leader, Roy Jenkins, who had not hitherto been renowned for his connections with the city.

Strolling around the west end of Glasgow, the urbane Jenkins entered a newsagent's and, sighting the Asian shopkeeper, went to proffer a handshake. "So, how long have you been here, then?", asked Jenkins, to which the owner replied evenly, "Longer than you".