The Rest Is History - 35. The Prime Ministers’ World Cup

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

Who is the greatest British Prime Minister of them all? The bookmakers have Winston Churchill favourite to lift the crown, but William Gladstone and Maggie Thatcher won’t give up the fight without a struggle. And who’s this coming up quietly on the left-hand rail? Why, it’s Clement Attlee, who looks a real threat to the horses on his right. Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland debate the runners and riders in our inaugural Rest is History World Cup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Well, what a week it has been. What a tournament. And our thoughts turn inevitably to the retrospective after a feast of prime ministerial sport. It has, of course, been the rest is history. Prime ministerial World Cup.

And Tom Holland and I, Dominic Sambruch, we're still really in in shock i think from some of those results aren't we tom so much to talk about so many matches that i think will live long in the memory and i thought fascinating not just for the kind of individual matches but for the light that it shone on the whole field of prime ministerial sport the reputations are we going to do the whole podcast like this how are we going to um well the saints and grieves of history well well dominic okay well well that depends doesn't it dominic because that depends whether you think that organizing british prime ministers into uh a a fake world cup and then having people vote on them on twitter

is the best way to evaluate their reputations. Do you think it is? Well, it's a way. Well, you're never comparing like with like, are you? I mean, you're never comparing like with like anyway. So I don't think it's, of course, it's a ludicrous exercise, but arguably it's no more ludicrous than all the other exercises that are done comparing, you know, it's a Robert Walpole and Clement Attlee or whatever.

So, you know what? It was fun. I thought it was fun and it was revealing about a particular demographic, i.e. our listeners, and what they think of our prime ministerial history. So I did learn. I actually did learn from it. Didn't you? Okay.

Yeah, I did. And for the benefit of those who aren't on Twitter and aren't aware of what we're talking about, which may well be a sizable number of people who are listening to this, we organised a tournament, a kind of knockout tournament. So we had best of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals, final, to find out who the most popular British prime minister was, the prime minister that people who listen to this podcast and who follow it on Twitter chose as the greatest British prime minister. And Dominic, you selected the 16 prime ministers, didn't you? Yes. And you seeded them. So we had eight seeds who were, who were they? Churchill was top seed i think so it's churchill um walpole disraeli

gladstone pit the younger atlee lloyd george and thatcher right so they so they were the eight and then the other eight were and the other eight were lord salisbury um tony blair vican parmiston pit the elder so put the younger was seeded but put the elder not lord liverpool um hh asquith uh to robert peel and harold wilson who was inserted at the last minute at the producer's request because the producer thought there were insufficient labor names in the 16 and he wanted an extra person of course wilson got knocked out of the first hurdle so that proves what tony knows about history and since he's not here for this recording there's nothing he can do about him were there were there any uh prime ministers you felt were unlucky not to make that 16

well i think i would have put stanley baldwin in, but that's probably because I'm a bit biased because I like Stanley Baldwin. I think when I look at our list and I look at the tournament, I think it's very modern heavy. So I think the 18th century looks like a huge black hole, doesn't it? And we didn't have anybody between. I mean, we had Pitt the Elder and Walpole. But, you know, there's all these names, sort of the Duke of Newcastle or something, the Earl of Bute. But basically nobody knows anything about. And we didn't, you know, there's a big hole.

It's like the lists of kind of 100 great albums, isn't it? And it's always the most recent albums that kind of pop up. Yes, exactly. Exactly right. With possibly Sgt Pepper lurking around at number three or something. Although, although, Tom, my expectation, which was Thatcher and Blair would do very well for precisely that reason, as they do well in polls nationally, was not borne out. And I think that's an interesting example of the difference between political enthusiasts or history enthusiasts and the general public.

Because while we were doing this, I was moved to look up the most recent survey. Have you seen this? The most recent national poll done by YouGov in 2019, where they asked people who was the best prime minister. Now, who do you think people chose? The majority of the population. Churchill. Churchill. 21%, I think, chose Churchill.

Number two? I've no idea. I don't know. Thatcher, 19%. And then everybody else, I mean, literally everybody else was nowhere. Everybody else was kind of 4%, 5%. I think Tony Blair was 5%. Atlee was 4% or something like that.

And, you know, everything. And that just shows how there's a difference between the public and our listeners actually or are you perhaps implying that people on left wing are people on twitter are more left wing than people who aren't well that's a shocking thought that's been yeah i mean that will horrify some of our listeners perhaps but of course that's well chronicled isn't it that twitter tends to to skew to the left and i think you saw that a little bit in this in our exercise okay so so it's a bit like england playing in mexico that it's it's it's harder for certain players to compete on twitter i think there are there are definitely one or two players i can think of one

player in particular i think i don't think i think if you put margaret thatcher on a twitter poll against anybody animal vegetable or mineral, she's going to lose. Jane Lynn, Bono Law, Lord North. Okay. Well, should we look at the group matches and just do it to – essentially, we're not going to discuss the ins and outs of the match. We're just going to talk about the contenders and how they shape up. Sure. The first round was Disraeli against Lord Salisbury. And Disraeli won that. He got 79% of the vote. So Disraeli, we had a bit of a difference on that because I wanted him as a seed and you didn't. And I think that was the only thing that you seeded to me was letting Disraeli get in. Well, here you've got a really good example, I think, Tom, of the

way we think about prime ministers in history. So, I mean, we've done tons of podcasts where we've talked about great men or greatness and individuals in history. But prime ministers are an interesting one because there's always a slight difference between, you know, the historical record and what historians think of them and their place in the public memory so disraeli i think there is a there is a big difference between you know he wasn't prime minister that long um he you know he wasn't as astoundingly popular at the time by any means but he's left this enormous imprint on the popular imagination as a sort of victorian prime minister you know it's a sort of dandy as the face of imperialism it's the face of kind of populatourism and queen victoria loved him and queen victoria loved him and the sort of gladstone

disraeli rivalry and disraeli props up and you know we see him in films sort of somebody anthony scher is always playing him in films about queen victoria and it's all very jolly and everybody's pleased to see him you know there's disraeli But Lord Salisbury was a much more substantial figure. He was Prime Minister for longer. He presided over, you know, if you're going to pick a moment when Britain really was top nation, I think under Lord Salisbury it would probably be it. And Lord Salisbury epitomised a particular kind of Toryism

that's very successful, kind of Villa Toryism at the end of the 19th century. So the thing about Lord Salisbury, who is Prime Minister three times, isn't he? Yeah. And he's Prime Minister when the 19th century becomes the 20th century. Exactly he is, yes. He said my favourite ever Prime Ministerial saying, which is whatever happens will be for the worse,

and therefore it is in our interest that as little should happen as possible. And I guess that that's the people who don't like conservatives think that that's the essence of conservatism, just stop anything changing. But that's not what he did, is it? I mean, because basically Lord Salisbury does lay the foundations for the kind of 20th century incarnation of the Conservative Party, which actually has been much more successful than either the Liberals or Labour in the 20th century incarnation of the Conservative Party which actually has been much more successful than either the Liberals or Labour in the 20th century. Yes, so Salisbury

exactly, Salisbury said a lot of reactionary things, he looked very reactionary he kind of incarnated he seemed to incarnate. And he looked reactionary because he had a big beard. Yes. Yeah, basically that's what I'm saying. Although had Corbyn become Prime Minister then he would have been His beard was smaller, I think, no one can dispute that. I know saying. If Corbyn had become Prime Minister, then he would have been... His beard was smaller.

I think no one can dispute that Corbyn... I know, but we've had no bearded Prime Minister since Lord Salisbury. So Corbyn not becoming Prime Minister was a wasted opportunity on the Pogonophile front. Salisbury's also the first Prime Minister to have electricity. So he's got his house fully kitted out with electric lights, well ahead of almost, you know, most of his contemporaries. And when you say his house... Well, hisal yeah it's colossal but but salisbury well i mean there's it's obviously ludicrous to make a case for lord salisbury because he's he's dead in terms of public opinion

nobody really remembers lord salisbury other than historians and historical enthusiasts but he's a much more substantial figure i would argue really than disraeli but i guess that that kind of points out that part of what people are voting for in this is it's not just political achievements it's the kind of the the the the charge that you leave in the historical imagination exactly disraeli is a wit he's a novelist he's flamboyant and he's a contrast to gladstonian victorian moralism um he's kind of dickens isn't he and he's become prime minister yeah he's he's the he's the way station between dickens and lloyd george so you know that's and he also disraeli is the first so there's a huge tradition in britain i think of the mountebank prime minister um and we have one now so you know

the british the british vote electorate loves a mountebank i think mountebank is the word and the israeli was a mountebank lloyd george was a mountebank tony blair was a bit of a mountebank and boris johnson is a mountebank definitely is yeah okay but i mean i think that that this is kind of interesting as a reminder that the impression that people leave on the historical record is it extends beyond the academic texts that professional historians study. Absolutely. I mean, you get this from the Roman emperors, don't you, Tom? Yeah, and that's a crucial part of it. Yeah, yeah. Well, we've talked about Disraeli.

Inevitably, we now come on to Gladstone who um was drawn very amusingly against tony blair um and gladstone got he won 55 so that was that was quite a tough battle actually before we talk about gladstone specifically i think maybe we should leave gladstone slightly later on because he's becomes a big star later in the tournament doesn't he okay so let's talk about tony blair it's blair bowing out that i think is so interesting and I think Blair clearly Blair on Twitter is always going to face a big uphill battle because as you say Twitter kind of leans to the left and Blair is crippled by Iraq but I think what's fascinating about Tony Blair as a prime ministerial character is he won three elections he was obviously tremendously popular and tremendously effective as an electoral

vote winner but I can't think of many prime ministers whose reputation has sunk so precipitously after leaving office. You know, so Tony Blair is now the one prime minister who basically, you know, he shows his face in public, he goes to buy some milk at the corner shop and people shout at him about Iraq and say, oh, you ran off to America or you're a fraud and all that sort of thing. Well, but isn't it also crucial he wouldn't go and buy milk from a corner shop because he's so rich and that's another aspect of it well i suppose so i mean but prime ministers are often rich when they leave office i mean margaret thatcher you made a lot of money from speeches but you'd expect her to because she's she you know she was all about

making money i mean that was that was what it was all about whereas tony blair was i mean he was supposedly a socialist and he just kind of made and people never like socialists making money i think no and i suppose i just think he it's an extraordinary you know one day somebody's an extraordinary biography of tony blair and it will seem like this sort of greek tragedy the trajectory from the 1997 things can only get better people waving their little union jacks outside number 10 to the sort of sense now that he's he's actually become for a lot of people i think almost a comic figure um not for me dominic well i know you were you were you i just have to listen to him and i

think yeah that's completely what's good what good sense but you see you admire him for all the wrong reasons though don't you i think he was the person who was behind the idea that the um that the first vaccine the second vaccine should be delayed which then got picked up by the government and became he he was single-handedly single-handedly responsible for that you think tom i think i mean i think he was he was the political figure who was pushing for that the hardest and then got taken up so i think he's still he's still out there doing good anyway um blair got knocked out um yeah leave it up let it go and that set up that then set up the intriguing quarterfinal round between disraeli and gladstone i mean absolutely one for the fans that's what the tournament wanted

and needed and got so we'll come to that in due course but the next um the next group match was uh winston churchill top seed so we'll perhaps come on to churchill later he won by 62 against the viscount palmerston um i think my favorite victorian prime minister so he's prime minister um 1855 to 8 1859 to 65 he's a tremendous lad isn't he i think yes i think palmerston would i'm surprised he hasn't i guess it's a sign that he's not better known that he hasn't been totally cancelled. Because in the age of Me Too, I don't think he's a very, you know, he's not. You wouldn't go to, you know, you wouldn't dine a ditch for Viscount Palmerston's reputation, would you? He's the kind of guy who goes to stay with Queen Victoria and he bothers her, bothers her maids and, you know, can't keep his hands to himself.

I mean, that's one thing. Supposedly, wasn't that because he went into the room thinking that it was someone who he'd been it was a usual bedroom who would welcome yes who i think there was some control i agree it's it doesn't look entirely good from from from today's perspective but he did make one of the all-time great prime ministerial jokes to the french guy who who said that if i were not a frenchman i would wish to be an englishman to which palmerston wittily replied if i were not an englishman i would wish to be an englishman to which palmerston wittily replied if i were not an englishman i would wish to be an englishman too but of course he is the palmerston again you got the the um the slight gap between the historical record and the public image and insofar as palmerston has a public image it is the swashbuckling

sort of aged but swashbuckling exponent of gumbo diplomacy. Because he's 70 when he becomes prime minister. So he's the oldest person to become prime minister. And basically, Palmerston's thing, you know, the sort of Don Pacifico affair and all these sort of, is that if somebody has even the slightest connection to Britain, the most tenuous claim to citizenship and, you know, their face is slapped in a bar in some sort of um fly bitten port palmerston will send a gunboat to blast to blast the fly and strong arm of england

yes so he's the he's the kind of the embodiment of um victorian gunboat absolutely self-confidence in the middle of the 19th century so it's not really surprising he lost um no i mean this was probably this is this wasn't his year i think we can safely say this this isn't this moment okay and and talking of of flamboyant imperial expansion the the next group ran again i mean this was a classic one for the i mean the crowds loved this is again what they wanted pit the younger against pit the elder so son against father uh pit the younger one that's 75 so dominic so so pit the elder pit the younger tell us about them because people may not know about them right so pit the elder is um

he becomes lord chatham he is uh sort of mid to late 18th century um pit the elder is uh i don't actually know much about pit the elder tom i was going to try and bluff it and then i thought i know his trums printed out a load of stuff and he's got to come prepared so i'll let you do it well pit the elder i was actually backing he was my favorite he was the guy i wanted to win because he was um mp for old serum which was one of the right i think they had kind of five voters and about 50 sheep. And he dominated the House of Commons. Is that all you know about the sheep? That's all.

No, because he's basically, he's not as prime minister, but he's the guy who's essentially behind Britain's success in the Seven Years' War. Yes, yes, exactly. Our podcast was Dan Snow about the Seven Years' War in due course. the guy who's essentially behind britain's success in the seven years war yes yes exactly that's his dan snow about the seven years war in in due course but he essentially is is the guy who who makes britain a global imperial power so again you might well say that this year is not perhaps his year here's a great line i know that i alone can save the country and no one else can or something like that which margaret thatcher quotes in her memoirs saying she thought of pit the elder when she became prime minister and then pit the younger i mean pit the younger is one of

those few relatively few figures i think who is just a genuine colossus so i think pit the you know if you would if i was picking semi-finalists purely on performance i think pit the younger would have as indeed he was um would be a semi-finalist because he comes in at the end of the 18th century. He's, what is he, 24 when he becomes prime minister? 24. And he's got, so he's got young legs. So we've had Palmerston's the oldest. Yes.

Pitt the Younger is the youngest. And Pitt is, he's seen as the incarnation of anti-corruption after what's been a pretty corrupt period in British politics, really going back to Walpole. He is modern he he creates a series of coalitions to fight napoleon he's very anti-jacobin anti-french revolution sort of patriotic yeah he he is and he's the guy behind you know who who essentially kind of inspires britain to fight against france um through the revolutionary period through the nappeljonic period um dies shortly after the battles of trafalgar and austerlitz but um he he is a very committed abolitionist so i think that yes that this is quite an important aspect of how prime ministers are seen at the moment is where they stood on issues of the empire and on slavery. Yeah, because this came up again and again on Twitter comments, didn't it? Again and again, yeah.

So Pitt the Elder is definitely, I mean, he's a Mr. British Empire guy. And Pitt the Younger obviously holds it together by keeping Britain free from French invasion. But he is definitely on the side of angels when it comes to slavery. He's a friend of Wilberforce, big opponent of abolitionism. So perhaps that explains why, you know, that might be a part of why he went as far as he did.

In the Wilberforce biopic, he's played by Benedict Cumberbatch. I don't know if you've seen it, Amazing Grace. He's played by Benedict Cumberbatch. And actually, that's one of the few times, I mean, Pitt the Younger was mocked in Blackadder.

But Pitt the Younger, I mean, both Pits have left very little mark on the kind of cultural imagination haven't they I mean most you stop 100 people in the street in in in sort of um in Sunderland and how many of them can tell you about either of the pits so you know that they they should loom larger than they do and it to me it was a slight surprise actually that pit younger got as far as he did in the tournament i mean maybe it's an anti-french vote to some extent people sort of said you know maybe he won he won wars hurrah he's sort of i'm asking a bit of nelson's reflected glory i suspect he he also was famously prescribed port by his doctor and and then became addicted to it um yeah and apparently i learned yes yesterday somebody on twitter told me that um the uh the the doctor who prescribed the port to him that his son

then succeeded pitt as prime minister so lord ornington yeah was obviously playing the long game there so so maybe he'll feature in the next the next year's uh world cup who knows all right well we've done four of the first round matches. Coming up after the break, we have the eventual champion. And we have some absolute titans of the game, Tom. Lloyd George, Walpole, Asquith, and of course, Margaret Thatcher. So join us after the break for these colossal contenders. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz

gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisent is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com welcome back to the rest is history and we are of course talking about the prime minister's world cup um is the eventual winner on this side of the draw well time will tell let's start with um with this glamour tie tom holland um clement atley versus liverpool lord liverpool who did you fancy from the beginning in this one well well i i i i went for clement atley who i thought was going to win and indeed did win by the thumping margin of 81 i mean that was the largest margin of victory. And I think that's probably because most people

have no idea who Lord Liverpool is. Yes. Including me, because I rather embarrassingly thought that he was Prime Minister during the Crimean War, which was, of course, Aberdeen. Yeah. You basically got your cities mixed up, didn't you? I did.

So Lord Liverpool is this sort of ultra-reactionary figure, really. He's the end of the Napoleonic Wars and into the 1920s. He's Prime Minister a ridiculously long time. And he's Mr Peterloo, isn't he? So that wouldn't make him popular with people on Twitter at all. No, I kind of, now that I look at that, I wonder whether we included him in the seeds purely on the basis of longevity rather than any reasonable prospect of victory.

Didn't you say that he was the first prime minister to wear trousers? He was. He was the first prime minister to wear trousers. I think that's reasonable. And also, he's the only prime minister to have a London railway station named after him, Liverpool Street. Is that right? Yeah. That's a very good fact.

Yes. Because, of course, Liverpool Street, you can't go to Liverpoolpool from liverpool street um it's named after lord liverpool yeah and obviously peterloo so he's one of these people yes in in the long run people will only ever know one thing about him and that will be so we should just say i realize that we haven't said he so he was probably 1812 to 1827 i mean that's a long such a long time such a long stretch. Such a long time. Such a long stretch. But obviously in a slightly pre-democratic era, you know, he's head of this sort of relatively aristocratic cabal that's running the country and he just sticks at it. And the argument in his favour is wildly unpopular with a lot of very famous poets. So Byron, Shelley and so on, who react very, very, very strongly against Peterloo and all that. But they never actually target Liverpool.

They're always going after Castle Ray, who's foreign secretary at the time. I think it's slightly colourless, Lord Liverpool. He's one of these prime ministers who's slightly colourless, Lord Liverpool. He's one of these prime ministers who's slightly colourless. I mean, actually, in that sense, the Attlee match-up is not such a bad match-up because they both are less well-known in some ways than some of the characters in their governments. Yeah. Okay, yeah, that's great punditry there. I like that.

I really like that. That's really good. You think I've got a career in this kind of thing? And talking of punditry, we now move on to definitely one of the kind of star performers in the tournament who didn't go beyond this round. And that was Margaret Thatcher. Yeah. Who was one of the seeds. She was up against Herbert Henry Asquith, who was prime minister from, what is he, 1908 to 1916.

And who led us into the First World War. Led us into the First World War, yeah. So Asquith, you know, I love Asquith. He's a great figure. I'm very fond of Asquith. He won pretty comfortably, actually, 59% beating Thatcher. And our producer had said to it me when this started you know if thatcher wins you're gonna have to write your own scripts um that

that suggests that he always writes the scripts which of course you know that's a bit of a kind of a moot point um but uh yeah she was never in danger winning the tournament was she i mean she was never going to win a tournament like this um and it's an interesting thing with margaret thatcher it's not just that she's divisive because i think to be a politician by definition is to be divisive because to govern is to choose and you know it's the fact that she the divisiveness has lingered so long and now defines her for a lot of people and there are a few other prime ministers of whom that's true i think and it's extraordinary and i think a lot of that tom perhaps blair possibly but i think it's more charged with thatcher i think it's much more charged and i think personally i think a lot of it is because

she's a woman and i think um i've always thought that a lot of it is very charged because of because she's a woman and because she's seen as a woman who closed down a particular masculine way of life. And I think that adds a lot of the charge to it. Because Theresa May isn't regarded with any... I mean, people barely remember her at all, do they? No, people don't really remember. I mean, already you can sort of say, you know, that Theresa May will be a bit of a footnote in history,

as Gordon Brown is actually or as James Callaghan is or Sir Alec Douglas Hume. You know there are some Prime Ministers, you know Ted Heath was only Prime Minister for three and a half years but he did a lot and he was Mr Europe. Europe was his thing and that

defined him. What's going to define Mrs May? I mean failing to get Brexit. Failing to get brexit failing together yeah yeah okay so so mrs satcher lost um asquith uh of course a baliel man like yourself yeah like myself the superiority of a baliel man so were you were you backing him again i wanted him to well i um i i do like to see asquith going far because i think he was utterly shafted by lloyd george in the first world war and of course asquith asquith is this fantastic character you know he's basically in the first world breaks out he's busy bothering his daughter's

best friend venetia stanley and sending her these endless letters in fact there's a hilarious moment about a week before the first world breaks out out. He writes to Venetia Stanley, who's basically, what is he, about 25 years his junior or something, and says this is the most awful torment I've ever known. I have to give up coming to see you at Country House weekend because I've got to deal with this bloody First World War.

And there's a lot of this sort of stuff. During one of the battles of the Western Front, he's spotted reading a book in the Athenaeum while having his hair cut. And there's all this sort of misbehaviour. Bono Law, the Conservative leader, when they went into coalition, went round to talk to Asquith and he was kind of playing bridge with three young ladies. That's kind of what I i mean you you wouldn't think that this is the guy to to beat a a heavyweight champion like thatcher but um clearly is it

yeah clearly king reading classic books and having your hair cut during battles is obviously the way to go but i quite like the idea that somebody who sits around reading classic books beat someone who never did um anyway let's move on so the next match was um so robert walpole the first prime minister against uh peel uh and walpole won that 64 percent no he didn't he lost it he lost it peel i'm sorry yes yes sorry peel one yeah peel one so walpole was seeded and i guess that you seeded him because he i mean he's the first prime minister so he's the beginning of the 18th century um obviously a titanic figure yeah but i guess that perhaps people don't do people remember peel better than they remember walpole i mean i think people remember peelel better than they remember Walpole? I mean, I think people remember Peel.

Some people have done Peel at school other than the Corn Laws, the repeal of the Corn Laws. So basically when Peel, the Corn Laws were a hugely sort of beloved pillar of Tory ideology, protecting domestic farmers and keeping prices of food high and uh peel repeals the corn laws um basically committing political suicide because he thinks that people in the cities should get cheap food from abroad and also this is against the the backdrop of the uh of famine in ireland as well isn't it yeah and course, the other thing that he's... Exactly. And of course, the other thing he's remembered for

is the police. So, Bobbies, you know, the Metropolitan Police. So Peel has two big things sort of in his favour that people remember. Now, Walpole, to me, Walpole should be a semi-finalist. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind that Walpole is in the top four because he founded the Office of Prime Minister

at the beginning of the kind of hanoverian succession um walpole establishes stability he's prime minister for 21 years but he's a massive crook isn't he he is a crook but i mean who isn't a crook in 18th century politics i mean that's just a sort of that's a that's a ludicrous allegation to me even even by the standards of the early 18th century, he's regarded as a crook. But I think there's much... I mean, he keeps us out of lots of foreign wars.

He has... You know, Britain is extremely stable, you know, by comparison to what's come before. I mean, you think what's come... If you're becoming prime minister in 1721, it's a new office. You've just got this German monarch over. It's against the backdrop...

To whom you're speaking in Latin. Yes, extraordinary, extraordinary. And against the backdrop of pretty much in living memory, you've had the Glorious Revolution, one king being kicked out. You have the Civil War lurking behind all that. And you have the rise of France as the great superpower and all this. And Walpole presides over this sort of this this golden age in some ways um for the new united kingdom you know it's in

great britain is a new country formed in 1707 and all of that is a is a tremendous achievement and sure he lined his pockets but they all did and you know i think he should i think he should be in the top i think he should be two or three to be honest in british prime so he's but he's portrayed as um howieman in in the beggars opera and he said cross about that that he then brings in the what is it the lord chamberlain censoring plays yeah i don't mind that i'm quite authoritarian as you know, so. I don't know. He enshrines wiggishness as the absolute governing creed of 18th century Britain. And he defines British politics in the 18th century.

He had beautiful porcelain, and I've seen his porcelain. Do you know where I saw it? Do you know where it is? I can't possibly imagine. It's in the Hermitage in St. petersburg rick it's rubber war poles yeah so so um he had an amazing art collection in howton hall in norfolk um and then it all got sold to uh catherine the great that's a very interesting fact very interesting and i think it went back to howton hall um a couple of years ago and i spent all the time it was there i was thinking i must go and see it i must go and see it and then i

completely forgot to go and see it so an opportunity wasted but i had seen it in the hermitage so that was what a great story there from uh from tv um we've got punditry robert peel had a staffordshire accent that's another good yeah so peel is one of the last prime ministers, really, for a very long time, to have a non-RP accent. And there's a point at which, obviously, all prime ministers after that are going to public school, and they're all speaking the same way. But he's got a regional accent. Peel went to Harrow, where he was friends with Byron.

Yeah, but obviously he kept his... So obviously he didn't pick it up. And then he gives the Tamworth Manifesto, doesn't he? Which is the first political manifesto in British history. So somebody, we were talking about Gladstone earlier, and we'll come back to Gladstone in another podcast, but somebody was sharing a clip online. There's a recording of Gladstone speaking

and there's this claim that Gladstone spoke with a Liverpool accent and he doesn't. He sounds nothing like, you know, Ricky Tomlins. Imagine no possessions. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So that's Walpole and Peel.

And then the final one was Lloyd George against Harold Wilson. You've already been reading about Harold Wilson and given away the result. So no shot. Lloyd George won that 60%. Maybe come to Lloyd George when we talk about the quarterfinals. Let's do Wilson. Let's do Wilson. Yeah, let's do Wilson.

So some people love Wilson, don't they? Some people love Wilson. I've written a lot about Harold Wilson. I've basically written hundreds of thousands of words about Harold Wilson. And I always think he would be a great person to have as your next-door neighbour. Why's that? He's a nice guy. He'd lend you his lawnmower. His Mac.

His good company. You know, you could go round and he'd get out the brandy bottle. He has a great knowledge. He'd be great on this podcast, actually, because he had a great knowledge of minutiae. He and Roy Jenkins, when Roy Jenkins was a chancellor, they bonded over their knowledge of railway timetables, for which they were both enthusiasts he was very young wasn't he when he became he was about 10 or something when he became yeah when he became

president of the board of trade that's right yeah and he had this terrible mustache which he grew in the 1940s to make himself appear um to make himself appear more mature he had got supposedly the best degree in economics or something, the best mark in economics that Oxford had ever seen when he was a – and he was at Oxford in the 30s, I think it's the 30s, at a time when everybody else was going to sort of communist meetings and cocktail parties, and Wilson was asked to go to one of these, and he said, no, thank you very much.

I came here to work and uh basically man after your own heart and all the yes exactly and all this sort of a lot of his labor um colleagues actually looked down on him because they saw him as too middle brow he read agatha christie he played golf he ate tin salmon rather than smoked um he had these sort of very humdrum habits, which, of course, endeared him hugely to ordinary voters because people saw in Wilson somebody like themselves. I always think Wilson is a great model for the Labour Party. You know, if you pick somebody like Wilson,

I mean, he's not that dissimilar from Attlee. Sort of small C conservative, patriotic, ordinary. He makes a virtue of his own ordinariness and he he goes out of his way to say it's the Tories who are extraordinary because they're rich and spoiled and and I'm just like you I'm not you know he didn't make a great point of ideology so when he commissioned Philip Ziegler the biographer of Mountbatten to be his um to be his authorized biographer Ziegler said to him you know i'd love to do it but there's one problem i i'm not a socialist and wilson said oh don't worry neither am i

and that sort of thing it's basically a lot of his own activists held against him i think that kind of thing endeared him to to ordinary voters okay i've got a question for you which is um flagging up a podcast we're going to do on we're going out on thursday with ben mcintyre about the history of espionage and spying um wilson thought that he was being bugged by mi5 didn't he he did particularly really it's really really unclear so wilson does in his second time in office which is pretty shabby and i would say it's probably the worst period of prime ministerial leadership in our lifetimes uh 74 to 76 he does seem to have got very very paranoid he thought he was being bugged by the south africans by boss the south african spy agency and he also thinks you know there's lots of spy agency was called boss yeah unbelievably that's

brilliant brilliant bureau of state, I think it is. Goodness, I've learned something. And so the stories, people like Shirley Williams tell these stories. They say he would take them into the dining room or the cabinet room, and he'd point to a picture of Gladstone, funnily enough, and he'd point to Gladstone, and he'd say, that portrait is bugged. They're watching me through Gladstone,

or they're listening to me through Gladstone. Or he'd take people into the toilets and say, we can only talk here, and he'd put on the taps, all this sort of stuff. I mean, this actually, this genuinely happened. Now, some of his ministers thought this was demented. And he did have, he had dementia, didn't he, while he was in office? Well, it's unclear, but possibly in the final months. Certainly his mind, his memory was not what it was. And he said as much to his aides, to Joe Haynes and Bernard Donoghue,

who were his closest aides, he would say, I don't really have anything to say. I can't remember about this. You know, I'm not what I was. So it's possible. Were they systematically bugging him? I think not. But I think there were agents within it.

I mean, MI5 was a pretty ramshackle, shabby, I mean, very Le Carre-like, actually, in the 70s. And there were people like Peter Wright, who wrote the book Spycatcher, who were kind of paranoid, you know, slightly Daily Express-ish, kind of. They thought Wilson was a red, and they were kind of going around saying,

I mean, when Ted Heath was asked about this, Ted Heath said, he said, basically basically the people in mi5 are so mad that when they see somebody on the tube reading the daily mirror they say he must be a communist we must we must have him followed so clearly across the political spectrum there was a sense that mi5 was slightly out of control um so wilson was probably on to to something so MI5 will be pleased that Wilson was knocked out, losing 60% to Lloyd George. And I think that wraps up the group matches. Okay.

So we're left with the quarterfinals, which was... Extraordinary drama in the quarterfinals. So the quarterfinals are Peel against Pitt the Younger, Lloyd George against Attlee, Disraeli against gladstone churchill against asquith we then had the semifinals and then of course the final um and we will go through those various matches we will look at the titans who were playing in those rounds um close-up analysis all the kind of sports punditry that you'd expect from someone like Dominic. And we will be putting that into a second Prime Ministerial World Cup podcast, which will be going out tomorrow.

So that is it from us for now. We will follow through this thrilling sporting contest in tomorrow's podcast. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com.

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