The Greatest PMs we never had?

I see the BBC has another list ranking 20th century Prime Ministers, with Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher not surprsingly coming out on top, Neville Chamberlain and Anthony Eden at the bottom, and Tony Blair somewhere in the middle.

I reckon that's probably about right, although I would rate Churchill higher than Thatcher and both James Callaghan and John Major higher than Francis Beckett does - both were dealt an impossible hand by their small parliamentary majorities. I also think he rates Harold Macmillan far too highly - the man was essentially a poseur who allowed Britain to stagnate under his seven-year leadership.

Meanwhile, as my contribution to the debate, here's my list of the Top 10 20th century figures never to become Prime Minister. Or at least, in one case, not yet.

1. Denis Healey
2. R.A. Butler
3. Hugh Gaitskell
4. Joseph Chamberlain
5. Gordon Brown
6. Enoch Powell
7. Iain Macleod
8. Michael Heseltine
9. John Smith
10.Roy Jenkins

Not all of these men could realistically have become Prime Minister - three of them, Gaitskell, Macleod and Smith - died before they had a real opportunity. But some of them would have done a far better job than the men they were forced to give way to - notably Healey (Callaghan), Butler (Home), Brown (Blair) and Heseltine (Major.)

Enoch Powell is of course the great enigma in my list. Had he, rather than Heath, won the Tory leadership in 1965, would "Thatcherism" have arrived 15 years earlier? Probably the country wasn't ready for it then, and might never have been ready for Enoch. But a genuinely great man nonetheless.

Home Thoughts From Abroad....

...was of course the title of Roy Jenkins' 1979 Dimbleby Lecture in which he first floated the possibility of the breakaway party that eventually became the SDP. Well, staying at my wife's cousin's cottage in South Normandy over the past week or so, I've been having a few home thoughts of my own.

As anyone who has ever been to Northern France in August will surely know, the place is pretty well deserted at this time of year. Much of the population heads for the South at the height of summer, and over recent days we have driven through fairly sizeable villages where there is not a soul to be seen.

The autoroutes are much the same. We made the journey between Calais and Rouen - a distance of 205km - in just under 1hr 40 mins, the equivalent of driving from Sheffield to the M25 in a similar time. It just couldn't be done in Britain any more, but in France, you can do it without even breaking the speed limit.

The overwhelming impression - from driving anyplace or simply from looking across the fields from the garden of our cottage - is that this is a country with a lot of that precious commodity, space.

You can get Radio Four longwave over here too, so we have been listening in each morning to catch up on the news from home and to express mild disappointment if not surprise that neither Prescott nor Blair have resigned yet.

In fact all the stories in our first week over here were about something else entirely - the influx of Eastern European immigrants into the UK, and Ruth Kelly's big speech, echoing john Reid, echoing Michael Howard, confirming that it is no longer "racist" to want to have a debate about immigration.

Personally, I think the Government has been pretty shameless in reaching this position, giving its denigration of Howard over the immigration issue during last year's election campaign, but nevertheless, it is the right one.

The debate about how many more people we should allow into the UK is no longer about race. It is about infrastructure, about space.

We are an overcrowded island. I have, increasingly, come to the reluctant conclusion that continued large scale inward migration into Britain, which may be desirable for all sorts of social, cultural and economic reasons, can only be achieved at further massive cost to our environment, to those remnants of rural life that remain.

Doubtless in some eyes to express sentiments such as these will make me a reactionary old Tory, one of those misty-eyed Daily Telegraph readers who wish the country was still as it was during the 1950s.

But what you get when you come to France - with a similar population to the UK's, but about four times the area - is a glimpse of a rural idyll of a much older vintage, the lost England of Thomas Hardy, of Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie before the coming of the roads.

Is it so very wrong to want to preserve at least some of that back home?

Tories go into conference season in by far the best shape

As I said in Friday's post on David Cameron's latest attempt to solve the West Lothian Question, last week's Tory aims and values statement was high on woffle and low on specifics.

Despite that, and the ongoing internal difficulties over candidate selection, however, it is clear that the Conservatives go into next month's party conference season in far better shape than their opponents.

Unlike both Sir Menzies Campbell and Tony Blair, Cameron can go to his conference knowing there is absolutely no threat to his leadership.

More on this theme in weekly podcast which is available HERE.

It's time for beer

Well, that's about it from me for a few days. I'm taking my customary late-summer break to recharge my batteries ahead of what seems certain to be an exciting party conference season. Bloggage will be lighter than usual over the next week or so, but I expect I will be checking in from time to time.

Meanwhile - I'm off for a much-needed beer!

Holiday fun

A current post on Labour Home features a "Fantasy Cabinet" with John McDonnell as PM, Bob Marshall Andrews as Home Secretary and Dianne Abbott as Health Secretary, among other things.

This will, of course, remain exactly that - a Fantasy Cabinet, though for most of us, I expect it is more the stuff of nightmares.

Meanwhile, what of the more realistic alternatives? Well, for what it's worth, here's my suggestion for a balanced Labour team to fight the next election, providing a blend of youth and experience, male and female, Blairite, Brownite, and independent left.

Readers are of very welcome to suggest their own line-ups!

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Deputy Prime Minister and Communities and Regions Secretary: Hazel Blears
Chancellor of the Exchequer: David Miliband
Foreign Secretary: Hilary Benn
Home Secretary: John Denham
Leader of the House of Commons: Jack Straw
Party Chairman: Alan Johnson
Minister of Justice: Des Browne
Minister for Consitutional Affairs and Devolved Institutions: Peter Hain
Trade and Industry Secretary: Alastair Darling
Defence Secretary: John Reid
Education Secretary: John Hutton
Health Secretary: Yvette Cooper
Transport Secretary: Douglas Aleaxander
Work and Pensons Secretary: Ruth Kelly
Environment Secretary: Charles Clarke
Culture, Media and Sport: James Purnell
Leader of the Lords: Lord Kinnock
International Development Secretary: Jacqui Smith
Minister for Social Exclusion: Stephen Timms
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: John Healey
Chief Whip: Nick Brown

Out go: Tony Blair, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, Charlie Falconer, Patricia Hewitt, Tessa Jowell, Hilary Armstrong and Valerie Amos.

A constructive Unionist response

On page nine of his latest Statement of Aims and Values, David Cameron promises that his party will "strengthen the United Kingdom by providing a constructive Unionist response to the West Lothian Question."

If this strikes you as woffle, you shouldn't be too surprised, given Cameron's previous policy statement promising that a Tory Government would be in favour of "a strong economy" and "representing modern Britain."

There are in fact only two "constructive Unionist responses" to the West Lothian Question. One is to abolish the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly and return all decision-making to a unitary UK Parliament. The other is to create an English Parliament with equivalent powers to the other two devolved institutions.

It's your call, Dave.