Judged even just in electoral terms, the failure of the Tory left feels massively under-reported and underappreciated. As we are seeing again right now, they always seem to make the same mistake of avoiding doing anything to scare the elites, and dismissing policies that will actually solve the country's problems as extremism - then wondering why voters aren't impressed at the end of it all.
Two minor points: Macmillan was not a septuagenarian when he resigned (he was 69); and the Secretary of State for War was not really like the Defence Secretary, as he didn’t sit in cabinet and was subordinate to the Minister of Defence, who did sit in cabinet (and became Secretary of State when the service departments were abolished and the modern MoD created in April 1964 - under Thorneycroft, as it happens).
I'm flattered to be name-checked in the second sentence, though I was surprised to read of my commitment to "the rehabilitation, and indeed valorisation, of various post-war social democratic intellectuals and politicians". Out of curiosity, who did you have in mind? Most of my writing on this period has been about Conservatives...
Not the author, but I imagine the important bit was your (real or alleged) membership of an 'academic clique', rather than the specifics of your work. Obviously, it would be a bit over the top for QMUL to have three historians all doing almost identical work on post-war Britain.
Judged even just in electoral terms, the failure of the Tory left feels massively under-reported and underappreciated. As we are seeing again right now, they always seem to make the same mistake of avoiding doing anything to scare the elites, and dismissing policies that will actually solve the country's problems as extremism - then wondering why voters aren't impressed at the end of it all.
Two minor points: Macmillan was not a septuagenarian when he resigned (he was 69); and the Secretary of State for War was not really like the Defence Secretary, as he didn’t sit in cabinet and was subordinate to the Minister of Defence, who did sit in cabinet (and became Secretary of State when the service departments were abolished and the modern MoD created in April 1964 - under Thorneycroft, as it happens).
I'm flattered to be name-checked in the second sentence, though I was surprised to read of my commitment to "the rehabilitation, and indeed valorisation, of various post-war social democratic intellectuals and politicians". Out of curiosity, who did you have in mind? Most of my writing on this period has been about Conservatives...
Not the author, but I imagine the important bit was your (real or alleged) membership of an 'academic clique', rather than the specifics of your work. Obviously, it would be a bit over the top for QMUL to have three historians all doing almost identical work on post-war Britain.
Thanks. Seems a bit rum to put me in a "clique", the defining feature of which is a commitment to a subject I don't write about.