Steve Richards > Quotes

“The editor of the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, told Major: ‘Well, John, let me put it this way. I’ve got a large bucket of shit lying on my desk and tomorrow morning I’m going to pour it all over your head.”
― Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May

“Parts of the left were wary of Foot’s loyalty to Callaghan, but Foot, who would one day be leader, was convinced that a struggling Labour government was incomparably better than a Conservative one. Late”
― Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May

“My religious upbringing and practical studies of economics and unemployment in which I had been engaged at Oxford combined in one single thought: unemployment was not only a severe fault of government, but it was in some way evil, and an affront to the country it afflicted.”
― Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May

“Minutes after losing his seat he was asked by the BBC’s Robin Day, live on TV: ‘Do you think that the fact that you are facing a trial for conspiracy to murder contributed to your defeat?’ With characteristic quick-witted charm, Thorpe replied: ‘Put it this way, Robin, I don’t think it helped.”
― Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May

“Her fall traumatized the Conservative Party for decades to follow – a final lesson on leadership from Margaret Thatcher’s long reign. There are times when parties become trapped. They need to remove a leader to have any hope of winning an election, but in doing so they are inevitably deeply troubled for a long time to come.”
― Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May

“Any government can balance the books by not investing very much. By 1997 the NHS was in such a wretched state that hospitals were being compared unfavourably with those in Eastern Europe. In London, theatres issued warnings to audiences, urging them to leave much more time than they might anticipate to get to the venue, because public transport had become so unreliable”
― Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May

“Property is freedom.”
― Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers: Reflections on Leadership from Wilson to May