Theakston K. After Number 10. Former Prime Ministers in British Politics

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logged between 1742 and 2001, 1,322 (51 per cent) came in the period

1955–2001 (covering Churchill and Attlee to Major). He identiﬁes Callaghan

as the most parliamentary-active former prime minister in British history,

with 484 interventions (a remarkable 19 per cent of all post-prime-ministerial

interventions since 1742 and 36 per cent of all of the post-war ones). A

crucial factor is what he calls ofﬁce-holding between Number 10 and the

backbenches (apparently including being Leader of the Opposition or party

leadership as well as other ministerial ofﬁce): 82 per cent of all inter-

ventions are attributed to the 21 former prime ministers in that category

since 1742, the rest accounting for only 18 per cent of interventions. (Non-

ofﬁce-holding former PMs account for an even smaller proportion – 8 per

cent – of parliamentary interventions in the post-war period despite being

half of the total number of post-war premiers in his study.) But there is

considerable individual variation qualifying the sense of trends over time.

Just four former PMs (Attlee, Home, Heath and Callaghan) account for

90 per cent of all the post-war parliamentary interventions. Three indi-

viduals (Peel, Rosebery and Lloyd George) between them account for 62 per

cent of all the interventions in the period up to the Second World War.

These seven former prime ministers made 77 per cent of all parliamentary

interventions by former prime ministers.

Just’s study is revealing but tells

only a part of the story of the political and other roles played by former

prime ministers.

The book starts with Walpole because his experience of leaving ofﬁce set

an important precedent. Previously many of the leading ministers – unless

they died – were impeached or threatened with prosecution and punish-

ment in some way after they fell from power. In 1742 there were calls to

impeach Walpole and an inquiry into his ﬁnances was made, but it soon

ran into the sands – though action against him would have been justiﬁed.

Later there was talk of impeaching Lord North (the prime minister who

‘lost’ the American colonies), Lord Aberdeen (after the Crimean war), and

even Tony Blair (over Iraq) but these threats were never serious.

The ‘club’ of ex-prime ministers is rarely one they really want to join.

Few left Number 10 as happy, contented or fulﬁlled people, or at a time

and in a manner of their own choosing. Some, like Baldwin, report they

felt ‘an enormous relief’ when they left ofﬁce. But they mostly have a deep

need of the political game and of ‘the bustle of greatness’, and often ﬁnd

giving it up, or being brushed to one side, difﬁcult and frustrating.

They

miss the Number 10 life-support system: the information ﬂows and top-

secret brieﬁngs, the expert and attentive staff of aides and advisers, the

sense of being in the know and at the centre of things. James Callaghan

once told Denis Thatcher, husband of the then prime minister, it was a

‘wonderful thing’ to be a former prime minister. ‘You go where you like.

You have a wonderful time. Really good.’ ‘Can’t wait’, Mr. Thatcher replied,

‘can’t wait.’ But his wife did not see it that way: one of her closest aides,

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Lord (Charles) Powell, said that after Margaret Thatcher left Number 10,

‘she never had a happy day’. ‘The telephone goes and immediately you

think, Oh goodness me, the United Nations is sitting’, she said in a TV

interview after her resignation. ‘Then you realize that it’s no longer you

any more.’ Driving down Whitehall towards Westminster, she confessed

she would be half-expecting the car to swing into Downing Street before

realising that it would not do so.

Some former prime ministers dream – however implausibly – of a come-

back to Number 10. It is easy in Number 10 to succumb to ‘the illusion of

indispensability’ – what David Marquand described as ‘that most insidious

of all prime ministerial temptations’. This feeling leads on to what David

Carlton called the ‘Chatham complex’ (‘I know that I can save this country

and that no one else can’, as Pitt the Elder declared) – ‘such illusions are

notoriously common among former prime ministers’, argues Carlton.

But

those who stay on as Leader of the Opposition after an election defeat

often do not last long in that role. Nine 19th century premiers had two or

more non-consecutive terms in the ofﬁce. But only four premiers serving

entirely in the 20th century managed to hang on to the party leadership

after losing a general election and going into opposition, before then coming

back for another term in Downing Street: Baldwin, MacDonald, Churchill

and Wilson. This could conceivably happen again but it is an open ques-

tion how far changes in the media, parties and the wider politics of leader-

ship now mean that ‘when you’re ﬁnished, you’re ﬁnished for good’.

Certainly, John Major seemed relieved to be able to fall on his sword and

give up the party leadership immediately after his 1997 landslide election

defeat.

Some have more of a ‘hinterland’ than others – interests and activities

beyond politics. ‘I think it is extremely foolish of politicians to be so

embedded in politics that when the days end there is nothing in their life

but looking back to what once they did and once they were’, John Major

has said. ‘Don’t ever forget that you may suddenly leave politics, volun-

tarily or by compulsion at any time, and don’t wrap every aspect of your

life around politics or you will regret it.’ Harold Macmillan made a sim-

ilar point about the need to make a clean break, commenting ‘It is tempt-

ing, perhaps, but unrewarding to hang around the greenroom after ﬁnal

retirement from the stage.’

However, the retirements of many ex-prime

ministers are desolate, bitter and unhappy – many come across in the bio-

graphies and memoirs as sour, crabby and depressed rather than serene and

contented. With others there is a glimpse of close and happy family circles

(examples include Lord North, the Peels, the Douglas-Homes) and of the

enjoyment of ‘real life’ after Number 10.

When Baldwin retired in 1937, he is said to have resolved to make no polit-

ical speeches, neither to speak to the man at the wheel nor to spit on the

deck. But some ﬁnd it difﬁcult to be so forbearing toward their successors.

Introduction 3

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(The last thing a new resident of Number 10 wants is the political equi-

valent of ‘back seat driving’ from the former occupant.) In the 1830s Grey

seemed to regard his successor Melbourne as little more than an under-

study who was not up to the job – his job – and became more and more

resentful and critical as Melbourne developed his own policies. More

recently Heath and Thatcher were examples of ‘how not to do it’ – the ﬁrst

isolating himself in his party by staging a ‘great sulk’, the second actively

plotting against and trying to undermine her successor, helping to fuel the

Tory party’s civil war of the 1990s. Another negative model was the charis-

matic Rosebery, who was thought still to have a brilliant future before him

when he ceased to be prime minister in 1895 aged only 48, but who threw

it away by his posturing, grandstanding, disloyalty and disengagement

from the disciplines of organised party politics. Ex-prime ministers cannot

have a constructive continuing role in British politics if they try to ‘go it

alone’. Gladstone was thinking of the difﬁculties caused by Peel’s attempt

to play an independent role in politics in the late-1840s after he left the

premiership when he said, ‘former prime ministers are like untethered rafts

drifting around harbours – a menace to shipping’.

A few former prime ministers have come close to creating constitutional

problems because of their closeness to the monarch of the time. In the

1760s Lord Bute (the ﬁrst Scottish prime minister and perhaps the most

unpopular PM ever) was suspected of having a ‘secret inﬂuence’ and play-

ing a destabilising role as ‘the power behind the curtain’ with the young

George III for several years after his short premiership. For a year or so after

he stepped down in 1841, Melbourne and Queen Victoria kept in close touch,

she ﬁlling him in on what the Peel government was up to and asking for

advice, which he freely gave – eventually Palace advisers had to put a stop

to these potentially dangerous exchanges. Later the Queen sent secret letters

to Disraeli after he had left ofﬁce, asking his opinions on foreign policy and

commenting on her dealings with his successor Gladstone.

Back in government ofﬁce after being prime minister

‘Anyone who has played the main stage of theatre land shouldn’t attempt

to come back in provincial repertory’, Harold Macmillan once said. How-

ever, from the 18th century onwards 14 prime ministers have ‘come back’

and served in the governments of later administrations and under other

prime ministers – over a quarter of our prime ministers. (In three of those

cases they then went on to become prime minister for one ﬁnal time, after

which no other posts were held.) Lord Rosebery argued that to have an ex-

prime minister in a Cabinet was ‘a ﬂeeting and dangerous luxury’.

But it is

not that ‘ﬂeeting’, for the cumulative post-prime-ministerial service of this

group adds up to 79 years (30 per cent of the post-Walpole period). And for

the prime ministers who made these appointments nor were they ‘luxuries’

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but, rather, seen as essential steps to strengthen their governments in the

political circumstances they faced.

Anthony Trollope in his great political series the Palliser novels gave

a ﬁctitious example of a phenomenon that would have been well known

to him (four former prime ministers appeared in the governments of

successors in Number 10 during his lifetime). ‘Caesar could hardly have

led a legion under Pompey’, protests the Duke of Omnium in the novel

The Prime Minister (1876) when it is suggested he serves in his successor’s

Cabinet after his government falls. Having stood on ‘the top rung of the

ladder’, he thinks he could not ‘take a lower place without degradation’.

Only after a few years do changing political and personal circumstances

pitch him back into government, when he agrees to become Lord President

of the Council in Mr. Monk’s Cabinet (in the follow-up novel The Duke’s

Children [1880]).

Some of the real-world prime-ministerial ‘retreads’ had had short tenures

in Number 10, like Douglas-Home who went on to serve as Foreign Secretary

1970–74 and play a digniﬁed elder-statesman role in the Conservative

Party, or Lord Goderich (later Earl of Ripon), prime minister for only

130 days in the 1820s, who went on to serve in the Cabinets of the Whig

Lord Grey and the Conservative Robert Peel in the 1830s and 1840s. Some

were stopgap prime ministers who were not as weighty or ambitious as

other ﬁgures on the political chessboard, and could afterwards be moved

to less senior posts with little fuss. Then there were those periods when

the political kaleidoscope had been shaken. Coalitions and realignments of

parliamentary blocs and factions produced a number of these cases in the

18th century. In the mid-19th century Russell left Number 10 and served

under Aberdeen and then Palmerston, before becoming prime minister

himself again, in a period of instability and change in the party system.

The 1930s saw both Baldwin and MacDonald rotating in and out of the

premiership and the ofﬁce of Lord President of the Council in the ‘National

Government’ coalition. Other cases occurred during wartime – Balfour

serving under Asquith and Lloyd George in the First World War (later

holding ofﬁce under Baldwin 1925–29), and Neville Chamberlain, after

he was overthrown, serving in an important position in Churchill’s War

Cabinet for ﬁve months until his death in 1940. There were only two cases

of former prime ministers serving in other Cabinet positions in ‘normal’

peace time conditions of single-party government in the 20th century:

Balfour (under Baldwin) in the 1920s and Douglas-Home (under Heath) in

the 1970s.

Sometimes these former premiers served in positions like Lord President

of the Council or Lord Privy Seal – without a heavy administrative burden

and with scope to offer sage advice and chair the odd committee, though

the occupants can ﬁnd themselves marginalised and ignored in what becomes

a ‘position of distinguished insigniﬁcance’.

Four former prime ministers

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served as Foreign Secretary (Wellington, Russell, Balfour, Home), and three

as Home Secretary (North, Portland and Addington – the latter was Home

Secretary for more than nine years after leaving the premiership). Welling-

ton was Minister without Portfolio – and still a weighty voice in the Tory

party – under Peel 1841–46 and, incredibly, also Commander-in-Chief of

the Army from 1842 until his death in 1852 (continuing in that post under

the Whig government that succeeded Peel’s). Some were more successful,

more at home, and achieved more in these post-Number 10 ministerial

positions than as prime minister. Balfour was a weak prime minister for

three years, and much of his historical reputation rests on what he did in

the 11 years he held government ofﬁce after being evicted from Downing

Street.

This pattern of former prime ministers serving under their successors

might have been even more common for there are at least seven others who

were offered ministerial posts after they had ceased to be prime minister,

but refused them. Grey rejected the chance of a come-back in 1835. Glad-

stone offered Russell a Cabinet post in 1866 (thinking he would be less

trouble in the government than out of it), but he declined it. Lloyd George

offered both Rosebery and Asquith posts in his wartime government, meet-

ing with refusals. Churchill dangled various job offers before the aged Lloyd

George in 1940 but the Welshman held back. At the height of the Suez

crisis in 1956 Eden offered Churchill a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio

– but the old man’s private secretary said he would not like ‘the opposite of

the harlot’s prerogative’ (responsibility without power). When Callaghan

succeeded Wilson in 1976, he offered him the Foreign Ofﬁce, but Wilson

had had enough and did not want to stay on. Heath wanted Thatcher to

make him Foreign Secretary in 1979, but she had other ideas, offering him

instead a job 3,000 miles away as Ambassador to the USA; he took the

message but not that job. (Rosebery in 1906 and Lloyd George in 1940 also

turned down the Washington embassy.)

Health and age factors

Longevity and good health are essential ingredients for a successful post-

premiership. Both Peel and Baldwin used to say that for health reasons no

one should be prime minister for more than ﬁve years (in fact nearly half of

our prime ministers have clocked up ﬁve or more years in the job); Major

thought that eight years was long enough, after which it was usually

‘downhill’. Few leave Number 10 in as good physical shape as when they

enter it: the premiership is and always has been gruelling and stressful. It

has been said that prime ministers age at two or three times the normal

rate of advancing years while they are at Number 10. On leaving ofﬁce

many are wonderfully rejuvenated, though others never really fully recover

their energy levels and capabilities. Baldwin admitted that when he ﬁnally

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quit he was ‘so tired that I could do nothing and think of nothing for

months and it was over a year before I felt normal’. Major said it had taken

him a year to recover from the physical strain of being prime minister, and

he was only in his mid-ﬁfties. ‘The thing about the job’, Tony Blair once

said, ‘is its utter relentlessness. It never leaves you. Never. It is emotionally,

physically and mentally draining.’

Gladstone once said that 60 should be the maximum age for prime min-

isters (although he was 82 when he started his fourth premiership). On the

other hand Callaghan, when asked the question was there ‘an age when a

prime minister should consider that he is past it?’, replied, ‘There’s no age.

It’s a case of mental condition.’

But age has a bearing on the length and

on the scope and nature of a prime minister’s post-Number 10 activities.

Seven prime ministers died in ofﬁce, two as old men but ﬁve in their

forties or ﬁfties. A further nine died within two-and-a-half years of leaving

Number 10 (most of these in their seventies). The longest-lived prime min-

ister was Callaghan, who died a day before his 93rd birthday in 2005; the

shortest-lived was the Duke of Devonshire who died in 1764 aged only 44.

The average age on leaving Number 10 of all ex-prime ministers was 61, the

average age at death was 73, and so the average post-premiership or retire-

ment was 12 years long. Advances in health and medicine help explain

why the average age at death of 18th century prime ministers was 64,

of 19th century prime ministers 74, and of 20th century premiers 81.

Four 20th century prime ministers made it into their nineties (Churchill,

Macmillan, Home and Callaghan), and only one died in his sixties (Bonar

Law). The longest post-premiership was 41 years (Grafton – who was only

34 when he left Number 10 in 1770), the shortest only 17 days (Campbell-

Bannerman, who was the only premier to die in Number 10, in 1908). Of

the 17 who enjoyed more than 15 years of retirement, only ﬁve were over

60 when they left ofﬁce. No one who left Number 10 aged over 70 had a

post-premiership of more than 12 years; most of that group enjoyed pretty

short retirements.

Exhausted by work and illness, some prime ministers become old men

before their time – such as William Pitt the Younger and Lord Liverpool.

Some hit the bottle when they leave ofﬁce – such as Melbourne (who would

drink three bottles of wine a day) and Asquith. But others stay remarkably

vigorous into old age. Palmerston, who died in ofﬁce in 1865 aged 81, kept

his physical vitality until a late stage: jumping over railings as an old man

and getting into scrapes with young ladies. Lloyd George fathered a child

with his long-term mistress (and later second wife) when aged 66. Glad-

stone was 84 when he ﬁnally left ofﬁce in 1894 – older as prime minister

than any other man before or since. In contrast to, say, the gout-ridden

and semi-invalid Lord Derby, and to the far-from-robust Disraeli, Gladstone

had exceptional physical resilience and stamina (he was still chopping

down trees into his eighties: ‘the forest laments in order that Mr. Gladstone

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may perspire’, quipped Lord Randolph Churchill).

In the 20th century

Macmillan stayed in good mental shape far longer than his skilfully decep-

tive ‘old man’ act might have suggested. Eden’s doctors told him that unless

he resigned he could be dead within six months – he then when on to

live another 20 years after stepping down. In actuarial terms John Major

(born in 1943) and Tony Blair (born in 1953) – both of whom left the

premiership in their mid-ﬁfties – can expect to be around for a while still.

Honours

So far, not counting Tony Blair, only nine prime ministers ended their days

as plain ‘Mr.’, and never accepted a peerage or knighthood (despite, in

some cases, repeated offers); four of the nine died in ofﬁce as commoners.

The nine are: Henry Pelham, George Grenville, Pitt the Younger, Spencer

Perceval, Canning, Gladstone, Bonar Law, MacDonald, and Chamberlain.

From the mid-19th century until comparatively recently, a hereditary

earldom was the ‘going rate’ for prime ministers who were not already

peers. From Sir Robert Walpole (who also received an earldom) to Sir John

Major, 29 prime ministers or former prime ministers became Knights of the

Garter. The KG, which is limited to a group of 24, has since 1945 become

almost routine for former prime ministers (only Macmillan and Douglas-

Home – who was a KT [Knight of the Thistle] instead – not receiving it), but

before then it had been rather more selectively bestowed.

MacDonald refused to go to the Lords and Blair is reported to have said

that the House of Lords was ‘not [his] scene’ (though he may one day

become ‘Sir Tony’). Other Labour ex-prime ministers, such as Attlee and

Wilson, positively delighted in accumulating honours. Churchill was

offered a dukedom when he retired in 1955 but only after discreet enquiries

by the Palace conﬁrmed he would refuse it. Macmillan was the last former

prime minister to accept an hereditary earldom, in 1984, more than

20 years after stepping down. Alec Douglas-Home gave up an earldom to

become PM and was the ﬁrst ex-prime minister to go to the Lords with a

life peerage.

Perhaps because they have made and traded so many peerages, some

prime ministers have been rather disdainful about honours and cynical

about the honours system. Melbourne himself refused both an earldom and

the Garter, and was dismissive about what he called ‘gee-gaws’ and other

men’s grasping for baubles. Peel (who inherited his baronetcy) refused all

other honours and distinctions. (In his ﬁve years as PM he had created only

ﬁve peerages, a record of parsimony unequalled before or since.)

Tony Benn once called the House of Lords ‘the British Outer Mongolia

for retired politicians’, but its advantage for former prime ministers is that

it offers a recognised platform, enabling them to air their views and con-

tribute to political debate. Some have been conscientious and respected

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peers, attending regularly and making some effective interventions (e.g.

Callaghan); while others did not attend or speak often or make much of a

mark there (e.g. Baldwin, Eden). When they reach the Lords, former prime

ministers often have a low opinion of the place. Asquith thought it was ‘an

impossible audience … like speaking by torchlight to corpses in a charnel-

house’. To Balfour, it was ‘like talking to a lot of tombstones’. Callaghan

said it was ‘heaven’s waiting room’. Macmillan called it ‘the morgue’; the

Lords was ‘not worth belonging to’, he once said – though he enjoyed his

last chance to strut the political stage and made some witty, memorable

and mischievous attacks on Mrs. Thatcher’s policies.

One consequence

of a possible move to a reformed and elected second chamber might be to

remove the platform provided by the Lords for former prime ministers (and

other retired ofﬁce holders).

Putting pen to paper

‘A British politician’, Trevor Lloyd wrote, ‘starts a successful ministerial

career by taking the Privy Council oath of secrecy and ends it by signing

a publisher’s contract for a volume of memoirs.’ Tony Blair has negotiated

a deal worth £4.6 million for his memoirs; Thatcher’s brought her in

£3.5 million. The majority of the 20th century’s former prime ministers

told (and sold) their stories. MacDonald and Baldwin shied away from

doing so, leaving the ﬁeld free to their critics and enemies – a mistake not

made by others. Lloyd George, Churchill, Eden and Wilson did not write

full autobiographies but published detailed, multi-volume histories, memoirs

and self-justiﬁcations. Macmillan’s six-volumes of memoirs – based on his

diaries – totalled 4,000 pages. Major and Heath needed ‘only’ 700 pages,

Thatcher 1500 pages (in two volumes). Alec Home’s slight and anecdotal

book The Way the Wind Blows was a surprising best-seller, but the modern

norm is more on the door-stopper scale. It is likely that more copies are

bought than read from cover to cover. Even the authors are sometimes

honest enough to acknowledge their books can be hard going. ‘The prime

ministerial memoir is not a distinguished literary genre’, says Michael

Cockerell. ‘Most since the war have been dull, pompous or self-serving.

Some have managed to achieve the treble.’ ‘Political memoirs are the very

devil’, quipped Ian McIntyre. ‘They mostly read like Keesing’s Archives

without the jokes.’

No former prime minister has in fact written anything

about politics as compelling, revealing and fun to read as, say, Alan Clark’s

Diaries.

Before the 20th century few former prime ministers (or indeed other

politicians) wrote autobiographies or memoirs. There is only one published

autobiography from an 18th century prime minister (Grafton), and that was

published (in 1898) nearly 90 years after he died. Though many Victorian

politicians kept diaries (including Gladstone), virtually none published one.

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Gladstone had the opportunity – through the offer of a huge sum from

American publishers – to become the ﬁrst prime minister to make a lot of

money by writing about his experiences in politics and ministerial ofﬁce,

but he turned down the chance.

His great rival Disraeli wrote novels,

which Gladstone thought ‘trash’, but they were popular and commercial

successes (much to the disbelief of professional novelists like Trollope) and

they had some autobiographical elements.

Money matters

Pensions for former prime ministers were introduced only in 1937 at

the rate of £2,000 per year (equivalent to over £70,000 today). Asquith

(who was short of money in retirement) and Baldwin (who was not) had

both opposed pensions for former prime ministers, though Asquith

had called for the PM’s salary to be higher and Baldwin had argued it

was important for a former prime minister to be ‘independent’. Ramsay

MacDonald backed the idea of a pension linked to some sort of continued

public or state service by an ex-prime minister, though he was vague

about the details. The Times in 1924 supported pensions for former prime

ministers to avoid the danger of them having to money-grub through

‘dubious business or second-rate journalism’. Speaking for the government

in the debate on the legislation establishing the prime-ministerial pension,

Sir John Simon noted ‘there are many possible sources of income which are

open to lesser men which he [the former prime minister] cannot suitably

exploit’.

In 1972 the pension was ﬁxed at 15/40ths of the prime minister’s salary

and, following a recommendation from the Top Salaries Review Body in

1988, from 1991 all former PMs were entitled to a pension equal to half

the PM’s ministerial salary, immediately on leaving ofﬁce, however long

they had served (so worth £66,000 pa in 2009). Since 1991 they have also

received a special allowance (currently £90,000 pa) – the ‘Public Duties

Cost Allowance’ – to help fund an ofﬁce and secretarial support. Churchill

had had unique ofﬁcial support as an ex-PM, with a Foreign Ofﬁce diplo-

mat seconded to be his private secretary, though Churchill reimbursed the

government for the cost of his salary. A government-provided car and driver

for all ex-PMs was made available from 1975. They, at least, do not need

to share the shock of some former ministers who, it is said, realise they

are out of ofﬁce only when they get into the backs of their cars and they do

not set off.

In January 2008 the Review Body on Top Salaries suggested the special

prime-ministerial pension could no longer be justiﬁed. The argument for it

had been ‘it would not be digniﬁed’ for the prime minister to ‘seek employ-

ment after leaving ofﬁce’. But – with Lady Thatcher, John Major and Tony

Blair clearly in mind – it was now the case that a former prime minister

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could ‘expect to have a career, or a portfolio of earnings opportunities on

leaving ofﬁce’ and was ‘unlikely to suffer hardship’. In future, it proposed,

former prime ministers should be part of the regular ministerial scheme,

receiving three months’ ‘severance pay’ and drawing a ministerial pension

dependent on length of service and contributions. Legislation would be

needed to give effect to these recommendations. But although it meant he

would probably be foregoing a substantial sum of money, Gordon Brown

announced he would immediately accept the proposals and would – when

his turn came – take a pension on the new basis.

Half the prime ministers in the 18th and 19th centuries did not choose

to live in Number 10 Downing Street, preferring their own London homes,

and so did not experience major domestic upheaval on quitting ofﬁce.

However, since 1902 all prime ministers except for Wilson in his 1974–76

government have lived ‘above the shop’ in Number 10. In the 1970s the

civil service was asked to look into the possibility of buying an ofﬁcial resi-

dence for Leaders of the Opposition to deal with the problem that some

of the prime ministers suddenly removed from Number 10 do not actually

have anywhere to live. Asquith had rented out his old house; Alec Home in

1964 and Heath in 1974 were put up in other people’s ﬂats until proper

London accommodation could be sorted out for them; Wilson had no

London home to move into when he unexpectedly lost the 1970 election.

‘We bundle Prime Ministers out of their residence [in Number 10]’, it was

argued in 1974, ‘rather as if the bailiff had arrived for non-payment of rent

without even a county court hearing’. Ofﬁcials in the Civil Service Depart-

ment prepared a report listing all the objections and problems, and the idea

was then quietly buried.

Terrorism threats mean that former prime ministers continue to receive

police and security protection after they leave ofﬁce. Sir Edward Heath

was continually protected until his death in 2005. Lady Thatcher and

Sir John Major have armed protection teams, and security for Tony Blair

(including a 16-strong personal protection team and round-the-clock

guards at his houses in London and in the country) is reported to cost

£2 million a year. The Home Ofﬁce’s Royal and VIP Executive Committee

reviews security risks and keeps these arrangements under review. In

earlier periods, Churchill had received security protection until his death

in 1965, but Attlee’s protection was ended in November 1951 and Eden’s

protection appears to have been withdrawn around 1959. Both Wilson

and Callaghan apparently received protection so long as they remained

MPs after leaving Number 10, their security cover being withdrawn when

they went to the Lords, in 1983 and 1987 respectively. (Leaked documents

show concerns about a Jehova’s Witness managing to make it past the

ofﬁcers guarding Callaghan’s farm, reaching the house and engaging

the former PM in conversation, and the alarm system at the farm being

frequently set off by the pigs!)

Introduction 11

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10.1057/9780230281387 - After Number 10, Kevin Theakston