For Labour, defeat is like shortbread: it rarely stops with one. Loss of power in 1951 was followed by crushing reverses in 1955 and 1959. The party stumbled out of office in 1979 – and went on to lose in 1983, 1987 and 1992. Since 1945, Labour has bucked the trend on just one occasion: 1974.
In June 1970, to the surprise of just about everyone but himself, Ted Heath, who had been widely written off by his own party due to both dire approval ratings and his strange lifestyle, became prime minister with a majority of 30. Harold Wilson, Labour’s popular if, by that point, somewhat tarnished leader, had planned to retire in 1972. But he
was desperate not to go down as a loser and was able to persuade his colleagues that only he could keep together a party that was badly split between modernisers still pining over a departed leader (Hugh Gaitskell) and an increasingly vocal left.
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