Should former party leaders keep their noses out of politics?

Sean O’Grady asks if it is ever especially helpful when a predecessor offers advice – however well intended – to the incumbent

The political phenomenon of the “back-seat driver” is hardly new, but it’s a bit of a thing at the moment. Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and Jeremy Corbyn have all been giving Keir Starmer private and public advice about taxation, welfare reform, the general conduct of government, and, in Corbyn’s case, even about local authorities selling off allotments.

It’s meant to be helpful (maybe not in the case of Starmer’s immediate predecessor), but it doesn’t always work out that way...

What’s their problem?

On the whole, and crudely speaking, they think that Starmer isn’t really left-wing enough, which is ironic because they too (excepting Corbyn) were often criticised for just that in their own time.

Most recently, Kinnock has backed a “wealth tax” (never a prominent part of Labour policy during his own leadership), and wants to apply VAT to private healthcare charges (supposedly analogous to private school fees). Brown doesn’t, but he does think child poverty is an under-regarded problem and that the winter fuel allowance, which he introduced, needs to be restored.

Tony Blair has been pushing digital ID hard, just as he did when he was in No 10, when he never quite managed to make compulsory ID cards acceptable. More critically, Blair is supposed to have told Starmer that “this isn’t working” in a wider sense, and that net zero is “doomed to fail” (a point he later rowed back on). Were he not already in Starmer’s cabinet, Ed Miliband would also be outspoken about the downgrading of his Green New Deal.

Are they right?

Probably, but they do enjoy the luxury of observerdom, no longer living in fear of their own MPs, financial markets and, of course, Britain’s devoutly cakeist electorate. They, and we, cannot assume they’d be doing a better job, notwithstanding their experience. Even so, if Starmer metaphorically says “Well, you try it” – running the party, government, or both – they can reply, “Well, we did, mate.”

Why does this happen?

They miss the attention? Former party leaders and prime ministers – deprived, usually forcibly, of their former power and status – are sometimes unable to resist the temptation to advise and warn their successors, not least when their own policies and record are under attack (whether real or imagined).

Margaret Thatcher, conscious that such interventions can be unhelpful, actually promised after she left office in 1990 (and most unwillingly) to be a “good back-seat driver”. John Major and, to a lesser degree, William Hague would beg to differ about what that meant.

Thatcher more or less inflicted on them what Ted Heath, whom she ousted, visited on her during her premiership – constant barracking, grumbling and plotting. Harold Macmillan, who’d left No 10 even longer ago, also chose to criticise her harsh economic policies in the 1980s. Kinnock, in a backhanded way, said of Blair in 2007 that “he’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard”.

James Callaghan, who was in the merchant navy as a young man in the war, and was most restrained towards his heirs, said this of former leaders: “Don’t distract the man at the wheel, and don’t spit on the deck.” Aside from one remark, and a subsequent indecorous row with John Prescott in the Commons tea room about nuclear disarmament, Callaghan followed his own advice.

Why is there so much of this now?

On the Conservative side, it is largely a function of the growing population of ex-leaders – nine in all (from Major to Rishi Sunak), of whom six served as prime minister. They’ve usually been the more bitter critics of one another, with the Liz Truss-Kemi Badenoch spats currently being the most entertaining, and serious, because the very word “Truss” terrifies the voters, but attempts to slap her down make the Tories look divided.

It’s only fair to add that John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Sunak are being remarkably restrained as Badenoch continually trashes their reputations.

Labour has far fewer extant former prime ministers, and fewer former leaders. In addition, they tend to be more polite, and the most potent dissident among them, Corbyn, is now outside the family. The problem comes if they start to become the focus for rebellions, and make the Labour Party look even more divided than it actually is.

None, however – not even Corbyn – can match Truss for high-profile delusion.