The Rest Is History - 36. Our Greatest Prime Minister

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

In our last episode we debated the merits of British Prime Ministers through the centuries. But who was voted the best of all by the public and why? Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland discuss the men who made it through to the final stages of our Prime Ministers’ World Cup and analyse the public voting patterns which led to the final outcome. 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. Hello, welcome to The Rest Is History. In the second of our special podcasts, looking back at the sporting event of the season, the Rest Is History Prime Minister's World Cup. Now, in the first podcast, we look back at the first round of games, most of which went entirely as expected. But then, thanks to the indefatigable Jonathan Wilson,

who did the draw for us and did a bit of mid-tournament punditry, the draw threw up some titanic clashes in the quarterfinals and we had more than a few shocks. Tom Holland. This was the real business end of the tournament, wasn't it? When you get to the quarterfinals, the blood is flowing, the heart is pumping. There's that immense sense of tension in the air.

You must have loved it. I really did. I really did. And, of course, what the fans are all talking about, a clash for the ages, was the match that we knew, if it came about, was going to be. Because we're talking about one of probably the greatest rivalry in prime ministerial sporting history benjamin disraeli against william hewitt gladstone it was the draw that people wanted to happen and it happened amazing just thank you lady luck um yes it was a great match actually wasn't it it was a great match because uh who took the lead gladstone took the lead i think didn't he yeah and then disraeli came back and disraeli went

into the lead yeah and held the lead for a hell of a long time gradually over the course of the evening gladstone clawed it back and he ended up winning by 54 percent that sounds quite a decisive margin but it really wasn't it but that was a match that just kind of went backwards and forwards. So what was really fun about that was that was the one match, I mean, of all our Rest Is History World Cup matches, that was the one match that really seemed to catch people's imagination. So you've got people piling in who probably never even listened to the podcast, desperate to vote.

And I could see people on Twitter saying, come on Disraeli fans. Somebody put that sex worker bothering bastard Gladstone is about to win. And people, you know, passions were genuinely kind of running high. I can't believe that people are voting for Gladstone

or for Disraeli. I was busy catching up with line of duty ready it's going out on sunday so i'm going to cram in about five episodes and um it's it's very addictive i mean you very hard to tell your eyes away but honestly every 10 minutes i was checking my phone to look at the score with that and updating my family who had no interest in it whatsoever but i was still keeping them informed now tom for uh listeners uh who didn't listen to the last edition of this podcast got no idea what we're talking about completely

mad i should say that we at your suggestion actually we organized a world cup on twitter where people could vote and we had a series of knockout rounds where people could basically vote for i can't remember we we didn't call it the greatest prime minister we just called it the prime ministerial world cup. So the criteria were deliberately vague. Yeah. Yeah. And people sort of had the day to vote and prime ministers went through in

the series of knockout rounds. And the Disraeli Gladstone one was the one that clearly caught the imagination, not because people have a very keen interest in 1870s politics, but because it cuts to the heart of the way that we remember figures in history, because it's all about, it's all about sort of projection, and it's all about the kind of cultural baggage that historical characters have. So if you like your historical characters flamboyant and fun

and patriotic and sort of swashbuckling and a little bit dodgy, then Disraeli is your man. Whereas if you like them upstanding pious you know figure of rectitude serious moral all of that sort of stuff then you you turn to gladstone and they still those archetypes still have attraction because i mean i think that it those archetypes are kind of present whenever um johnson stands up to confront starmer prime minister's question time and i think that they're also there in the ongoing clash in Edinburgh between Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon. I think that these are, if you like, the kind of timeless archetypes of British politics. It's roundheads and cavaliers ultimately, isn't it?

I mean, going all the way back. So, yes, definitely a match for the ages so we talked about Disraeli in um the first episode which uh has gone out already and I hope you've already listened to if you haven't and you want to know more about Disraeli do check that out um so let's get on to Gladstone who really was the star performer I think I mean I think he captured the imaginations of sports fans not just here in Britain but around the world with his progress, because every match was tough, hard, gruelling, and Gladstone emerged from it. Just as you might expect, this is a man who relaxed by chopping down trees. Yeah, translating Homer.

Translating Homer. This is a man who, yes, who takes his fun in a kind of tough, earnest way. And that's essentially at this level of sport is what you need, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, the thing with Gladstone, Gladstone absolutely incarnates the Victorian age, doesn't he? He is Victorianism because he's so stiff and he's so, I mean, he's the grand old man, the GOM. Although Victoria hated him, which is always. Queen Victoria said she addressed

him as though she were a public meeting and and actually many of his own colleagues you know he's one of those characters that he's a monster in many ways he's a sort of titanic monster he's one of those characters like margaret thatcher or like nelson or like churchill or henry the eighth who's sort of larger than life that supremely got it suffused with a sense of their own importance and sees themselves as kind of- And justifies it. Yeah, and justifies it and sees themselves as incarnating the spirit of the age, which he does. I mean, if you think about recent books on the Victorian, so Simon Heffer wrote a book a couple

of years ago called High Minds about the sort of Gladstonian moment in British politics, in which he says this was a sort of high point of British public service. And Gladstone incarnates that. You know, Gladstone has this tremendous sense of Christian duty, which is, you know, reflected in all his civil service reforms and all that sort of thing. But, of course, it's also reflected in the other thing about Gladstone that everybody remembers, which is the bothering of sex workers.

Well, you call it bothering. Others might call it reforming. Yes. Well, reforming. I mean, see, that's so loaded now, isn't it? I mean, maybe people don't want to be reformed or maybe they don't need to be. They're not fallen and they don't need to be redeemed. But anyway, as a lot of people will know gladstone would you know go sort of tram the

streets incognito to um try and sort of reform uh prostitutes that he met on the streets and then he'd go back home and he would beat himself yeah um and that is a you know it's a delicious kind of psychological moment for people who appreciate human quirks. But it also gives you a sense of the sort of intense, tortured psychology of the man. But, I mean, I don't think he's equivalent of kind of, you know, the self-proclaimed feminist guy who then turns out to be a sex pest that you might get. No, no, no, no. You know, it's kind of a trope to say. I mean, he really did want to do good by the redeemed fallen women.

He wasn't molesting them or groping them. And I mean, Disraeli, isn't it, who says that he had not a single redeeming defect, which kind of sums him up, really. I mean, he's almost too, his rectitude is oppressive. It is oppressive. And I think a lot of people, I think a lot of his colleagues found that as time went on. So there's all these accounts of them sort of by the 1890s, his Liberal cabinet colleagues, often the younger ones. I mean, Gladstone is to them the grand old man.

They really do feel oppressed by him. It's like being sat around a table with the headmaster. Yes. by him. It's like being sat around a table with the headmaster. And, you know, when he goes, when he finally leaves office, some of them, a lot of them are in floods of tears. I mean, it's like those sort of scenes in Russia when Stalin died or something. They're delighted, but they can't help

sobbing because it seems like this great fixture of British life has disappeared. But of course, Dominic, there was a time where Gladstone was a young man. And as a young man, he was, I mean, he wasn't just a Tory, he was a reactionary Tory. And he was very keen on upholding, for instance, the rights of the established church in Ireland. Yes. And of course, in the long run, what he becomes most famous for is his pushing through attempt to give Ireland home rule. And I thought that it was really interesting in this match. There were people from Ireland quoting Disraeli, who was incredibly abusive about the Irish and saying, let's get behind Gladstone.

So, yeah, I saw that we had a flood of Irish votes, didn't we? Yes, we didn't have, which is so interesting, is that Gladstone has been in the news recently because he's been cancelled by Liverpool University. So his name has been taken. He's a great son of Liverpool, one of their most famous sons, and his name has been taken off a hall of residence at Liverpool, despite the fact that the students want him to stay

and a lot of the academics think it's ridiculous to take his name off. Because when he was a very young man, he basically spoke up for his family's – he tried to defend his family's colonial interests in the Caribbean where they owned plantations. And even though later on, of course, he became this great reformer and a champion of every conceivable progressive cause, that early sort of misstep on behalf of his family has damned him in the eyes of the University of Liverpool authorities. And so his name has been taken off this hall. And I think that what's interesting about that is that it reflects the way in which people today perhaps have difficulty in understanding the Christian context in which Gladstone is absolutely situated. Because of course, there's a sense in which his entire life is an attempt to kind of gain redemption for his what he comes to see as his early faults and gladstone is

absolutely a man who believes in sin believes in redemption and in a sense his entire career is a monument to that and this is an age where people can believe in that now we don't have that sense i think i think that's true and i think actually that's one reason i know it sounds like a stupidly trivial thing to say but one reason why in this immensely unimportant contest he actually did get people's imaginations because he is a he is in some ways the figure who seems most out of time who seems fur furthest from us. So, you know, the sort of 18th century figures, they're all quite, I mean, I hate to use this sort of jargon, but relatable, as Oprah Winfrey would no doubt say. But Gladstone is very unrelatable.

I mean, we've completely lost touch with that sort of, you know. Earnestness. Yeah, and that sort of muscular Christianity. The guy who thinks he's got a spare moment, you know, he's not going to check his phone or something. He's going to go and chop some logs and translate some a case to be said that actually Gladstone, in a way, is the prime minister more than anyone else who essentially creates British politics as it exists now? I mean, he's the great chancellor.

I mean, he essentially creates the role of the chancellorship of the exchequer as it exists now. He reforms the civil service, reforms the army, all these kinds of things. And in a sense, he reforms the civil service, reforms the army, all these kind of things. And in a sense, he creates modern Britain. And actually more than that, Tom.

So I do think that with the civil service reform and so on and the army reform is he gives us a modern state to take into the 20th century. But even beyond that, he gives us politics in the sense of something that you do that has a kind of mass participatory element so gladstone's midlothian campaign is campaigning about atrocities in bulgaria when he would i mean gladstone would speak to these colossal crowds most of him could not hear a word he was saying and who would yet be entranced by the moment and that sense of the great politician taking to the streets and addressing mass you you know, sort of, oh, Jeremy Corbyn-style meetings. It's Gladstone who really pioneers that.

So Gladstone creates not just sort of the statecraft of later ages, but he creates the electoral politics as well. And then he gets taken to his funeral by tube. Is that so? That is a great fact. I believe so. I think I learned that from a pub quiz. It may not be true, but I'll just smuggle that in.

Yeah. Anyway, so that was Gladstone against Israeli. Thrilling match. Gladstone ended up winning it by 54%. We then had Peel against Pitt the Younger. We've talked about them in the previous episode. Pitt the Younger won that 54%. Again, so same margin of victory.

Yes. I mean, Pitt was always going to win that, wasn't he? Peel's Corn Laws and his Bobby creating were not. And, of course, that now, and very unfortunate for Peel, that vote took place the day after the police had disgraced themselves. Oh, yes. In London. At Clapham Common, yes.

At Clapham Common, the vigil for Sarah Everard. So creating the police not perhaps uh no it was not um going to adhere itself to the voters so then we had um a clash between those on the liberal left um lloyd george against atlee and we haven't really talked about either of those two titanic figures of 20 20th century. So let's talk about Lloyd George first, who of course was in Asquith's government. Asquith knocked out Thatcher. So we've talked briefly about that liberal government. But having talked about Gladstone laying the foundations for the modern British state, in a sense, the Asquith government, in which Lloyd George was kind of the key player, they are really laying the foundations

for the welfare state, aren't they? They are. Well, they create a welfare state. I mean, the welfare state wasn't created in the 1940s. There was a welfare state already. So what's Lloyd George's role in that? So Lloyd George is chancellor. Lloyd George is Asquith's Chancellor.

Lloyd George wants things like pensions. He wants to increase the power of government. Lloyd George and Asquith together. And he wants to get rid of dukes, doesn't he? Dukes, yes. He's very hostile to dukes because they cost as much as a dreadnought. Because they're being blocked, you see, by the House of Lords. So the House of Lords is Tory-dominated.

And the House of Lords is determined to block the rise in taxes and the increase in things like um pensions and benefits that the new the liberal government are offering so what you've got in the early 20th century you've had gladstonian liberalism which is all laissez-faire kind of free market hands-off small government and the new liberals of asquith and lloyd george you know want a kind of welfare state they're much more activist government laying the foundation in many ways for what we'd think of as the sort of post-war labor politics and the reason that nobody remembers this of course is because the liberal party splits between these two men yeah becomes electorally irrelevant so they have no real constituency since then arguing for us to remember them.

And yet at the time, in the first 20 years of the – really, probably the first 30 years of the 20th century, Asquith and Lloyd George are these massive figures. I mean, Lloyd George in particular. People defined themselves politically by where they stood in relation to Lloyd George. He was the weathermaker. And so Lloyd George, as well as basically funding this kind of emergent welfare state, pensions and so on, he's also finding the money for dreadnoughts.

Yes. Essentially giving Britain's naval power, the ability to hold out through the first world war. And then he becomes prime minister. Basically Asquith is just kind of too laid back he's hanging out playing bridge with his girlfriends yeah so lloyd george comes in at the head of a coalition um is a war leader a successful war leader he represents britain at the treaty of versailles he does um and so he's a hugely significant figure

but however yes yes there's all sorts of that so lloyd george is the most so lloyd george is a And so he's a hugely significant figure. But, but, but. However, yes. There's all sorts of buts. So Lloyd George is the most, so Lloyd George is a, it really is a monster. I mean, apologies to sort of Welsh and liberal listeners, but I think Lloyd George is an utter monster. In the last podcast, we were talking about the mountebank tendency in British politics as now incarnated, as surely even his admirers would admit by Boris Johnson.

And Lloyd George is the kind of mountebank. So Asquith had saved Lloyd George from disgrace in the Marconi scandal before the First World War when Lloyd George was... Which is kind of insider dealing. Insider dealing in shares. Lloyd George came from this sort of relatively humble background in Wales, and he always said to his wife and to other people, my only ambition is to get on.

So he starts out as a radical, and I don't doubt that his radicalism was genuinely believed. But he sheds that, actually, in the course of the 1910s. So he ends up as the head of basically a Tory-dominated government. He sells peerages for cash. So he's incredibly financially crooked. And he builds up this political fund that he refuses to share with other liberals, which is pretty bad. But what is worse by today's standards is his sexual morality. I mean, Lloyd George, people call him the goat, and he really isn't a man that you would...

The goat-footed bard, wasn't it? Domain Arquines described him as, which is... It kind of makes him sound quite a romantic figure. He's basically a kind of informal bigamist. So he's got his wife at home and he's got his secretary or his sort of political wife, Frances Stevenson, in London. But, you know, no woman is safe, including his own daughter-in-law, which I think crosses various lines that shouldn't really be crossed. So his son's wife.

And I think that there was definitely a point in the early 1920s when, quite widespread across the political spectrum there was a sense that he's just a bad man one of his aides said that he he had the biggest organ i've ever seen yes that's so yeah in the changing rooms um my george might win on that if that was if that was one measure of success um yeah but so that said there's all that and then of course moving into the 30s there's the fact that he's actually quite keen on Hitler. He is. Yes, and I think that's partly because Lloyd George has this – his vision of politics, I think, is –

that it's defined by people like himself, tempestuous, driven, incredibly charismatic great men. So that's why he's such friends with Churchill Churchill and Lloyd George were great pals in the 1900s and 1910s and in some ways Lloyd George is a model for Churchill you know he's a man powered by demonic urges you know who insists thinks he can remake the country in his own mold and Lloyd George looks abroad and he looks at people like Mussolini and Hitler and he says well well, these are clearly great men like me. They are these tremendous speakers and all this sort of stuff.

And there is some talk, you know, Lloyd George's partisans will despise me for saying this, but there is some talk that had things gone otherwise for Britain at the beginning of the second world war, had we had to do a kind of Marshall Payton style arrangement, Lloyd George would have been an obvious man to step in. He's unprincipled, completely unprincipled.

He, like Payton in France, he would say to himself, I'm a hero, I'm the saviour of the country, I'm going to save the country yet again. So, I mean, maybe we shouldn't hold that against him because it didn't happen. But I think there was always the potential there with Lloyd George and a lot of his critics, you know, his Tory critics, for example,

people like Stanley Baldwin, they saw him as a dangerous man, a man of enormous ability and potential, but dodgy. Okay, which in a way is kind of what you want in a great sportsman, perhaps, an ability to conjure a sense of danger. You see him as the Maradona of British... Yes, a Maradona-esque quality.

He was up against Clement Attlee in the quarterfinal. And Attlee and Churchill, the two great titans of the mid-20th century, they are, I guess, what? Yeah. The Israeli and Gladstone after the mid-90th century. We haven't really talked about them yet. And both men have crucial roles to play

in the drama and excitement of the way that that the prime minister british prime minister world cup worked out so let's take a break now and then when we come back we'll go through the the last two matches of the quarterfinals the semifinals and the final and we'll have a particular focus on atlee and churchill we'll see you then 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 therestisentertainment.com that's therestisentertainment.com welcome back to the rest is history and we are dissecting the rest is history world cup that

fixture of the international sporting calendar we're making such smooth and professional progress that we are halfway through the third quarterfinal. We've discussed one of the quarterfinalists, which is Lloyd George. And we now want to his opponent, who is Clement Attlee, and we want to talk about. So Churchill and Attlee, they are, as you said, Tom, they are huge kind of mid-century figures, aren't they? But for me, I mean, obviously, Churchill is, everybody knows Winston Churchill. He's on the money. You know, there's a statue of him. He is part of the popular imagination.

And Clement Attlee, if you're not interested in politics, if you're not left wing, and if you're not terribly interested in modern history, he's a bit more anonymous, isn't he? But that's the famous thing that was always said about him, wasn't it? What was it an empty car a right empty taxi drew up and clement atley got out which is churchill is supposed to have said and never said churchill didn't say it he didn't say churchill was a great admirer of him and he was indeed so this praised him as a patriot yeah there's a story that a tour young tory tyro comes to chartwell and sort of opens a curry favour with Churchill, sort of lays into Attlee. And Churchill says, you know, if you ever want to come to Chartwell again, you will never

say such silly things about, oh, you'll never talk about silly old Attlee in my presence. Mr. Attlee is a great man and a patriot. And of course, Attlee said incredibly warm things about Churchill when Churchill died, which I always think is one of the, if you're a Churchill defender, I mean, that should be one of the sort of first things that you bring out, that when he died, Attlee said, we've lost the greatest Englishman of our time. In fact, the greatest citizen of the world of our time. Well, I suppose they were both in the coalition, weren't they, that won the war so in that sense kind of comrades so so um atley is he goes to haylerbury which is the public school that um essentially exists to send people to run india yes the british empire um and he always services college yeah yes and he he's he's very fond of it.

And then he, at this point, I'm guessing he's just a kind of, you know, he's a Tory guy, Tory young man. And then he goes to the East End and he has a Damascene conversion. Yes, he does. And he, so Attlee has this extraordinary, John Bew has written – who's Boris Johnson's foreign policy kind of advisor. Citizen Clem. Has written this fantastic biography of Attlee. Attlee is a fantastically interesting and admirable man because, as you say, he's completely conventional, public school boy, dory. But he does have a sense of – Butchempa moustache and pipe and loves cricket, not very good at it.

A lot of fellow feeling for him. You don't have the moustache though, Tom. I think you'd look smarter with a moustache. No, I don't. I don't. But I think our cricket record is very similar. I think you'd look very Terry Thomas. Hello.

Anyway, that's by the by. Shower. So Attlee, he has this incredible ethic of public service and um he does he goes to the east end of london and he gets involved with looking after kind of poor kids and that that fuels his socialism he's a christian socialist without the christianity as he says himself later on you know um i believe in all ethics. I can't stand the mumbo jumbo. And that's his sort of driving passion. But at the same time, the patriotism with Attlee is incredibly deep seated. And that's partly, I think, because he fights in the First World War.

He's a major, isn't he? Major Attlee. He's in Gallipoli. He's shot in the buttocks, I think it is. He's the second man out of Suvla Bay at Gallipoli when they were evacuated he then fights in Mesopotamia

and he's invalided out so he is somebody with an impeccable war record that's why people call him Major Attlee I mean people in those days did trade on that war record and that's what has always endeared him

I think to people on both sides of the political spectrum so somebody else who's very warm about that is margaret thatcher in her memoir she says what a tremendous prime you know what she didn't agree with him in his policies but what a tremendous man he was great labor man great labor and she actually says that in the 1979 election when she's running for her first term as prime minister, when she's standing, then she says she appeals to Labour people who voted for Attlee. She says, you know, come and vote for me because of that reason. So 1979 is seen as a kind of key transformative election and Thatcher as a transformative prime minister. And Attlee has, you know, I mean, he has a similar status.

So 1945 election and the Labour government that comes in. This is what Attlee's reputation is founded on. That he is the man who presides over the creation of the welfare state. I guess that we've already looked at the role that Gladstone and Lloyd George kind of played in that. So it's slightly more complicated than Attlee comes in and creates it from scratch. But his role in creating the National Health Service and the welfare state is key, isn't it? That's the key. Those three letters, NHS.

And the NHS has obviously become a kind of secular religion for British people. Now, British listeners will take that for granted. Our overseas listeners will think at this point the British are demented to worship a health service. But of course we do. I mean, it was in the Olympic ceremony, opening ceremony in 2012. And Attlee's status as the founder of the NHS or as the person who presided over its foundation

has enshrined his place in political legend. And I think the other thing, Tom, is that Labour have not had since then a prime minister of whom Labour activists are actually terribly proud. So there was Harold Wilson in the 1960s and 70s, but by the time he left, a lot of his own activists thought he was a crypto Tory. Tony Blair, who, you know, his reputation is well known,

and Attlee is the one kind of shining light so at least gone but but um atlee is you know major atlee and he he's he plays a key role in setting up nato he sponsors the british nuclear deterrent um he essentially presides over partition. I mean, he... So there are blots on his escutcheon, seen from the left, from the perspective of the left. Seen from the left, yes, absolutely. And I think, I mean,

he wasn't terribly popular with his own left, actually, when he was prime minister in the 1940s and 50s. And actually, the funny thing about Attlee is that until about the 1990s, if you had said to people who are great prime ministers atlee wouldn't really have featured and in fact on the left and among a lot of sort of

left-leaning academics a lot of the talk about the atlee government was wasted opportunities roads not taken right yeah um anthony howard the editor of the late it was at one point editor of the new statesman wrote an essay about the that period in which he said it was the greatest restoration of traditional values since 1660 of 1945. So this is classic Sandbrook punditry. Radical left-wing figures are rebranded as conservatives. But with the case of Attlee, he is clearly in some ways a very conservative, small C figure, as well as a very radically socialist figure. Yeah. Personally, he's very conservative, isn't he?

I mean, his love of – so, for example, they say to him, would you like a ticker tape machine in number 10? Dominic, being interested in cricket doesn't mean you're conservative. It just means you're interested in cricket. Oh, I'm not sure about that, Tom. I'm not sure. Because you're right. He used the ticker tape in cricket. Oh, I'm not sure about that, Tom. I'm not sure about that. Because you're right, yes. He used the ticker tape to get the cricket scores.

To get the cricket scores. And of course, nothing mattered more to him than his old school tie and Hayleybury. Right. You know, you mentioned the school. And we remember the school. We don't normally remember prime minister's schools. We remember it with him because it mattered so much to him. So a classically British mix of the conservative and the radical um yeah but perhaps

because to a degree there is a sense of anonymity about him he's not a flamboyant figure and so therefore as he as as the real atlee fades from the historical memory he can become a kind of symbol which perhaps is is the role he's playing here that he's a symbol of the nhs he's a symbol of i think the welfare state i think he's actually you know that he's a symbol of the NHS. He's a symbol of the welfare state. I think he's actually, you know who he reminds me of, Tom? George Orwell. They're the same period. Yeah, yeah.

And they're both, you know, there are cases to be made from them from both sides of the spectrum. Conservatives hold up Attlee as their sort of, you know, patriotic labour man. All that, blue labour, exactly. And Ken Loach and people of that tendency talk about the spirit of 45 and the foundation of the nhs so everybody can find in the sort of the romanticized clement atlee so it's not surprising that that atlee should have beaten lloyd george quite

decisively 64 because lloyd george i think despite i mean i think lloyd george's achievements in in laying the foundations for welfare state in as a leader who guides Britain through the First World War. I mean, I think those are immense achievements, but there's quite a lot to go against that. And you can see that that might drag him down. He's just a bad man. Whereas no one would say that Attlee was a bad man. So Attlee went through to the semifinals. So we had Pitt the Younger went through.

We had Attlee go through. We had Gladstone go through. And then the last quarterfinal was Asquith, who we've talked about in the previous episode, against Winston Churchill, the number one seed. And really, Churchill is the last person that we've got to talk here. He's, unsurprisingly, he plays a key figure in the drama of this sporting occasion yeah he wins against askwith but interestingly not by as much as you

might suspect because he wins 58 yeah and that was a sign of what was coming the next round right because i mean at that point when i saw that churchill had only just beaten askwith i sort of thought then well churchill is going to find it very, very hard to go through to the final once he's into the semis. So he was drawn. Yes, so he's drawn against Gladstone. So Attlee is against Pitt. And I think unsurprisingly, no one will be surprised,

he beats Pitt by 65%. So Attlee goes into the final. Gladstone against Churchill was another Titanic battle. The grand old man, you know, what a run he's had these classic sporting encounters. And it was always going to be huge against Churchill. And ultimately,

as he'd done in the match against Israeli, he comes through as the shadows are lengthening over the stadium and he ends up winning 55%. So Churchill is knocked out. So both the two. Exactly the same pattern. Both the two great war leaders, Pitt the Younger and Churchill, are knocked out. The two great reformers, Attlee and Gladstone, go through. So let's talk about Churchill because Churchill, obviously, even when he's not making it to the final, is what everyone's talking about.

Yes. He's Brazil, isn't he? He's the Brazil in this analogy. Now, I think the thing with Churchill is that Churchill is in a different league from everybody else in the entire tournament. And actually, when we advertised the tournament, the historian Alan Allport, who's written, started this fantastic project writing sort of social histories of the Second World War. He put a message on Twitter and said,

you know, if there's a rotund fellow in the draw with a bow tie, there's no point running the tournament because everybody knows that Churchill will win. Because, of course, Churchill wins every poll done normally to decide the greatest Briton. When the BBC did their huge landmark Great Britain's poll in 2002, I think Churchill won it pretty comfortably. He's on the money.

Was it John Lennon at nine? John Lennon was ahead of all sorts of people who should have been. But mind you, Princess Diana was very high. Yes, they were. But it was, yeah, Churchill was number one, and very clearly. It was obvious that Churchill was going to win. And, you know, Churchill is one of the few children know Churchill's name people have no interest in history whatsoever know of Churchill and Churchill is seen abroad as a symbol of Britishness but of

course okay so on that on that Dominic on that yeah could I could I just read a couple of tweets yeah actually I'm just going to read one tweet here. This is on the Gladstone Churchill. It's from Kappel Loft, who's a big Churchill fan. He says, seriously, the voters in this competition are nuts. Gladstone repealed the soap tax, introduced competitive civil service exams, and destroyed his party over home rule. Churchill played the leading role in saving Britain from Nazi domination. No contest in a sane world. Yes.

He got that a lot. It's got a point of view isn't it yeah um and i think this is the funny thing with churchill now churchill has this single signal achievement that is that for a lot of people transcends all else not least because it's the foundational moment of modern british identity you know it's our moment of sainthood it's we stood alone against the Nazis and saved the world, which is kind of drummed into every freeborn Britain. But is it anymore?

I mean, because that's what's so interesting about this result is that it does suggest, I mean, I know that people on Twitter almost invariably are to the left of the political centre of gravity beyond Twitter. But it is interesting that he seems to have become an absolute lightning rod in the ongoing culture war. And whenever there's some protest, people end up trying to,

you know, the police end up defending the statue, whether they need to or not. So even, you know, the, you mentioned the, the,

the, the protests, the, the way that the police handled the commemoration of Sarah Everard in Clapham Common. Somehow that ended up with police standing in a ring around Churchill's statue. And there's something clearly, it's almost, I guess, divorced from Churchill as a historical figure. And he's become a myth. You know, the idea that Churchill basically saved the world, that's one myth. I mean, he clearly plays an absolutely key decisive role, but I don't think he doesn't win the war single-handedly.

And then on the other side, the idea that he sends tanks in to mow down innocent miners and protesters, and that he's responsible for the Bengal famine, which is the other much-spoken-about charge against him. Now, I'm no expert on this, but my brother is, and knows everything about shipping lanes and shipping requirements in the Second World War. It assures me that Churchill was not responsible for the Bengal famine. Well, he's clearly not responsible for it. I mean, it's obviously a ludicrous claim. I mean, you're not responsible for a famine famine. Well, he's clearly not responsible for it. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's obviously a ludicrous claim.

I mean, you're not responsible for a famine that's taking place. You might be criticised for your handling of it. But I mean, to be fair to Churchill... I think in certain ways, I mean, really, Churchill killed three million people or whatever. Yeah, you read that all the time now, Tom. And that seems at least as big a myth. So on both sides, what people are arguing about are essentially untrue myths that nevertheless are rooted clearly in what makes Churchill such a fascinating character,

that he is the guy who, more than any other political figure, ensures that Britain fights on against the Nazis and is able to fight on against the Nazis. He is also very much a figure who believes in the British Empire and definitely has a kind of racist sense of the superiority of, I guess, Europeans, but specifically the British. Yeah. And both of those are incredibly resonant in the world of 2021. Well, see, this is the point where my sort of jolly facade crumbles and my true identity as an author of intemperate tirades will emerge. Right, okay, so give us an intemperate tirade. Well, I think – well, actually, if I can sort of reassemble my facade,

I think Churchill has become shorthand for Britain and Britishness and for British history, actually. So the attack on a Churchill statue is not an attack so much on Churchill himself, but it's an attack. It's an almost kind of Oedipal attack on Britain and Britain's sense of itself and its sense of its own. It's an attack on Gammons, isn't it? I mean, basically, I don't think that protesters really care about Churchill, but they know that attacking him annoys people that they want to annoy.

People like me. Middle England, the voice of Middle England. Yes, exactly. Yeah, but also people abroad. Because you said this, you know, what's been interesting about this is the perspective of people outside Britain. So Churchill beats As um askwith goes into the semi-final he he he loses to gladstone yeah so it's it's a gladstone um atley final and we had this um the tweet from david zirek from um israel Israel, who says this about Atlee.

He may have been great domestically, but he and especially Bevin are badly remembered here in Israel for refusing to remove limits on Jewish immigration after the war. By the way, to you in the UK, history is a spectator sport. To us in Israel, it is participatory. But that's kind of interesting. So that's the perspective there is that Attlee is not actually good either. Well, okay. Restrictions on Jewish immigration. How many people died in partition, Tom? Yeah, so partition and, yeah.

But he then goes on to say, and I tweeted back to him and said, well, who do you want to win? And David Zerich says, Churchill, exclamation mark. I'm shocked that he didn't. And then he says says rather touchingly, by the way, I am the link between Churchill and Kennedy. When I met Ben Gurion in Montreal in 1961, see my pic. And there's a picture of a little boy with Ben Gurion.

It was between his visit to his old friend Winston and his then secret meeting in New York with JFK. So that's kind of wonderful. It's a wonderful thing to have, isn't it? And I think actually what that captures, Tom, I agree with you. I mean, to people abroad, unless they're incredibly politicised,

it probably does seem demented not to pick Churchill. Because abroad, Churchill is a symbol of Britishness. And he's one of those few characters who has imprinted himself on the imagination of the planet. So to not choose him, I think you can tell from the responses we got on Twitter, to overseas fans of this podcast seem like a demented

act of national self-harm and self-punishment. National self-harm. I hope I'm not understating that, am I Tom? You've heard it here. People say that sport isn't isn't important but but clearly the result in this dominic has casted as an act of national

self-harm um no no i think that's entirely reasonable dominic and i can see why the daily mail employ you but actually no it's in a way it was fun that Churchill didn't make it. Had he won, it would have been predictable, wouldn't it? It would be very boring. Whereas it was actually great to have, I think particularly to have Gladstone running. We've got a lot of people talking about Victorian arguing about civil service examinations and soap taxes. And that's great to see, isn't it?

The fans, you know, they can't go to the pub and argue about it, but they can do it online. Wonderful, wonderful to see i suppose the disappointment for me was that the final was a bit for non-event because you knew that as soon as atlee got to the i think atlee churchill final would have got generated greater discussion because probably more churchill aficionados would have piled in whereas as it was poor old gladstone because his party the liberal party or the liberal Democrats as it now is it's basically become in electoral terms a little bit of an irrelevance he doesn't he didn't really have a constituency batting for him whereas Attlee clearly if you were at all left-leaning Attlee was your man from the start of the tournament to the end I mean I have to say I

I'm very happy to see both of them win. I think they're both kind of admirable, heroic figures who achieved amazing things. But purely from the sporting sense, the grand old man had had such an amazing run. I did want to see him go all the way. Who was the romantic favourite by the end, wasn't he? The romantic favourite. I think the favourite of the sports fan, perhaps, rather than the politics fan. But anyway, I thought it was a great tournament.

Really, really enjoyable. As I say, I did genuinely in some matches find myself checking the score at regular intervals. And I think that we should do something like this again, don't you? I do. Now, we've had various discussions about future World Cups. So,

Jonathan Wilson did the great sports writer, did the draw for us and did the punditry. And there was talk of a World Cup of Wilsons. That would be good, wouldn't it? Wilson Pickett against Harold Wilson. He could be both pundit and participant. But I think maybe there's talk of a World Cup of Gods. Now, I think that would be a fun World Cup.

What do you think about a World Cup of Gods? Well, who wouldn't like to see Athena against Odin in the quarterfinal? Yeah, it'd be a thriller. Think about Lockheed Thor. Yeah. Let's do that. So let's aim to do that in, what, a couple of months or something. Exactly.

So keep listening to the podcast, and then we'll surprise you with the World Cup of Ancient Gods. I think we should disallow gods who are currently worshipped i think that would be sensible it would be an unwise and unwise venture um yes i think i think that would be a very sort of defunct gods yeah okay well it's all been very exciting thank you for listening i hope you enjoyed it we will be back uh in a couple of days now, won't it? Um, what have we got coming up,

Dominic? Remind me. Uh, we've got, um, uh, we've got, we've got Ben McIntyre,

of course. We've got Ben McIntyre on spies. We've got Ben McIntyre talking about spies. Yes. So, so lots of excitement there. Um, and in a couple of months,

perhaps we'll be back with the World Cup of Ancient Gods. Thank you very much for listening. 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. That's restishistorypod.com.