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

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the venture was set up as a simple partnership rather than as a limited

company, it would not have to make public its income and proﬁts. News

emerged that the ﬁrm’s ﬁrst client was the Government of Kuwait, with a

reported seven-ﬁgure deal for the provision of advice on good governance.

Altogether – with his book deal, lecture fees and business earnings – Blair

was said to have earned as much as £15 million in his ﬁrst two years out

of ofﬁce.

Blair and his staff give the impression the things that are most important

to him in his life after Number 10 are those he is not paid for – the business

jobs and speaking engagements are a way to ‘pay the bills’. What matters

most, it is said, is his faith work. Blair formally converted to Catholicism in

December 2007, though he began a course of instruction for converts while

still PM in February of that year. With his wife and children Catholics, and

attending mass with them for 20 years, it was a personal decision strongly

inﬂuenced by family. Sometimes described as the most openly devout premier

since Gladstone, he spoke little about his religious faith when in ofﬁce,

admitting it was ‘hugely important’ to him but fearing being labelled a

‘nutter’ or ‘weird’. He said he did not pass a single day without reﬂecting

on the aftermath of the war in Iraq – and he continued to believe the war

was the right thing to have done – but his faith was a comfort to him.

Alastair Campbell had famously said in Number 10, ‘We don’t do God’; but

as an ex-prime minister Blair did God in a big way. The Tony Blair Faith

Foundation, launched in May 2008, is central and has been described as

‘the real focus of his post-parliamentary life’. Blair told an interviewer in

2009 he was ‘really, and always have been in a way, more interested in reli-

gion than politics’, and claimed the concept of an inter-faith foundation

pre-dated him becoming Labour leader and prime minister.

The foundation – which collected £3.6 million in donations and funding in

its ﬁrst year – aimed to promote greater respect and understanding between

the major religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddism, Hinduism and

Sikhism), make the case for religion as relevant and a force for good, and

counter intolerance and extremism. It supports programmes aimed at encour-

aging faith groups to work together to tackle malaria in Africa, has established

an interfaith schools programme, and has developed a course on faith and

globalisation which Blair himself helped to teach at Yale University. Bono, the

rock star and humanitarian campaigner, has said he thinks Blair ‘wants to

dedicate the rest of his life to decrying the concept of a clash of civilisations’.

Blair has said it is not for him a ‘this year and next year’ project: ‘I see this

over time as the rest of my life’s work.’

The more Blair engages in the global faith debate, the harder he will ﬁnd

it to engage in frontline or day-to-day British party politics, not that there

is much sign that he wants to. Even before he left ofﬁce, Blair was clear

he would want to stay out of British and internal Labour Party politics,

unswervingly support his successor, and not set himself up as a backseat

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driver or ‘king over the water’. Leaving the Commons would help avoid

tension or problems with Brown. ‘I have been reasonably fortunate rarely

to receive public “advice” from my predecessors. The job [of prime minister]

is difﬁcult enough as it is’, he said in June 2007. He had described, in a

2006 interview, ‘making mischief for whoever comes after’ or ‘causing

trouble for your successor’ as ‘the worst form of vanity’.

Unhappy Blairites were not so disciplined and were responsible for leaks,

brieﬁngs and stories supposedly revealing Blair’s ‘real’ views. On one account

Blair was said in June 2007 to fear Brown could be Labour’s Al Gore and

lead the party to defeat at the next election. In October 2007 Blair was said

by ‘friends’ to be unhappy with the direction in which Brown was taking

the government, complaining about his ‘empty’ conference speech and ‘lack

of vision’, though Blair immediately issued a statement denying these reports.

He is said to have told former allies he did not want them criticising Brown,

though some – such as Charles Clarke, who claimed Blair wanted to set

him up as a rival to Brown and even become leader – did not heed his call

for restraint. In 2008 Lord Levy, Blair’s friend and former Labour fund-

raiser, claimed in his memoirs Blair had told him that he was convinced

Brown could never beat the Tory leader David Cameron, or match his appeal

to ‘Middle England’. In 2009 John Burton, Blair’s former agent in Sedge-

ﬁeld, also said that Blair had told him when he stepped down he did

not believe Brown ‘had it in him’ to beat Cameron. In April 2009 Blair’s

privately-expressed ‘despair’ at Brown’s introduction of the 50 pence top

tax rate, as a vote-costing ‘terrible mistake’, somehow found its way onto

the front page of the Daily Telegraph. In August 2008, a secret memo (penned

originally in the autumn of 2007) was leaked to the press in which Blair

complained of Brown’s ‘lamentable’ and ‘vacuous’ performance, his ‘dissing

[of] our own record’, that he had ‘junked the TB [Tony Blair] policy agenda

but had nothing to put in its place’, his ‘confusion of tactics and strategy’,

and of his incompetence in making the Conservatives look like the party

of the future and on course to win the next election. The authenticity of

the memo was not denied, but the news it had probably been leaked by a

disgruntled Blairite ex-minister, and that Blair himself had sent a much-

edited version of it – couched as friendly advice – to Brown in late 2007,

did not make the disclosure any less damaging to the government.

Blair was advising Brown behind the scenes, speaking with him on the

telephone about once a month, sending him memos, and meeting occa-

sionally (three times in 2008) for face-to-face talks about various issues includ-

ing Blair’s work on the Middle East and climate change, and domestic politics.

In 2009 he was reported to have seen the prime minister to urge him to

hold the Iraq war inquiry in secret, fearing he might be subjected to a sort

of ‘show trial’ if it were opened to the public. Downing Street sources insisted

the two men ‘have a good relationship’. Blair was also constantly in touch

and talking regularly with ﬁgures like Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson

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– Mandelson ran his own return to government as Business Secretary past

Blair in October 2008, who supported the move. Although a trenchant critic

of his in the past, Blair (and Alastair Campbell) was drawn into giving private

advice to Ken Livingstone in his unsuccessful campaign to remain Mayor

of London in 2008. As Brown’s government ran deeper into trouble, Blair did

his best to be supportive publicly. Countering reports that he privately

admires David Cameron, his view that he was ‘thoroughly unconvinced’

that Cameron ‘has what it takes’ to be prime minister, was reported to the

New Statesman. Blair in television interviews praised Brown for his leadership

during the economic downturn and said all world leaders were facing ‘tough

times’ because of the credit crunch and banking crisis.

There was much speculation that Europe rather than Westminster might

be the scene for Blair’s next big political job. He was an early favourite for

the role of president of the EU Council, the new post created by the Lisbon

Treaty, after French president Sarkozy started promoting ‘mon ami Tony’ as

the ideal candidate in 2007. But in November 2009 the post went instead

to the Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy.

Blair was interested, it was reported, but only ‘if the job was big enough’,

offering scope for him to become Europe’s representative to the world, set

the agenda and exert inﬂuence on big issues. He was not attracted by the

idea of a bureaucratic role, chairing a large number of meetings and shut-

tling between Europe’s capitals oiling the wheels and piecing together the

compromise packages that keep the EU working.

As prime minister he

had regarded EU summits as chores and did not ﬁnd the mundane details

of EU policymaking stimulating.

Although the British government and Gordon Brown formally backed

his candidacy, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, was reported to be

unenthusiastic about ‘President Blair’ and President Sarkozy changed tack.

In the end, Blair lost out as the different EU heads of government decided

to opt for a low-key ‘ﬁxer’ rather than a more weighty, charismatic and

ambitious rival-ﬁgure, and because, in the political deal that was struck, the

post was claimed by Europe’s centre-right parties. Opposition to Blair partly

reﬂected the legacy of the Iraq war and his closeness to Bush and the USA,

as well as disenchantment with his failure to take Britain into the single

currency and the Schengen zone, Britain remaining the ‘awkward partner’

under him as under his Tory predecessors. It also counted against him that

the smaller EU states tend to be sensitive to key jobs being taken by leaders

from the bigger countries.

A sense of hyper-activism, restlessness and a continued craving for the

limelight mark Blair’s post-premiership. Such is his hectic pace that he

has admitted his family see as little of him as when he was in ofﬁce: ‘I’ve

got to rebalance’, he admitted in mid-2008. In early 2008 he was said

to have agreed to nearly 500 days of engagements in the year ahead, no

longer having civil service gate-keepers to manage the diary and say no on

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his behalf. A year into his post-Number 10 life, he was said to have told

former colleagues he was not missing the premiership and interviewers

reported he was ‘relaxed and revelling in his new role’. He remains driven,

and the setup in the ‘Ofﬁce of Tony Blair’ in central London signalled the

scale and reach of his ambitions. Blair was young to be an ex-prime min-

ister. When he left the premiership, he still felt ﬁt and capable of holding

down the job. What some have called his ‘manic job collecting’ reﬂects a

huge political personality trying to ﬁll the void, and ﬁnd something to

do as challenging and satisfying as being prime minister. It was easy for

critics to question his commitment to the Middle East when he was doing

so many other things as well: ‘How many jobs does an ex-PM need?’ was

the suggestive title of a newspaper article by Andrew Rawnsley. In ofﬁce he

was often criticised for ‘butterﬂying’ from one thing to another rather than

prioritising and sticking with one thing to see it properly through. There

is a danger of something similar happening to him now he has left ofﬁce.

With considerable energy, ideas and time to ﬁll, Blair could continue to

be an important and inﬂuential ﬁgure in his post-premiership years, but he

may need to be more selective and direct and focus his talents and resources

where he really wants to make a difference and can do so.

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Comparative Perspectives

As in Britain, other democratic states around the world face the question

of what comes next for a former government leader – a prime minister or

a president – obliged to leave ofﬁce because they have lost an election, or

come to the end of their constitutionally-ﬁxed term, or fallen ill, or lost the

backing of their party, or (more rarely) one who chooses to call it a day and

voluntarily quits. Just as in Britain, there is no ﬁxed or predetermined role

– they have to work it out for themselves, and what they do depends very

much on personal choices and on circumstances.

In the United States President Taft in 1912 recommended the adminis-

tration of a lethal ‘dose of chloroform’ to protect the country from the

dangers of a come-back and to relieve an ex-president ‘from the burden

of thinking how he is to support himself and his family, ﬁx his place in

history, and enable the public to pass on to new men and new measures’.

Former US presidents, it is said, used to ‘write books, play golf and get sent

to funerals’. In contrast Bill Clinton seems caught up in a hyperactive and

frenetic post-presidential existence: ‘the pressure for time on his schedule

would seem intense to anyone but a sitting president’.

One historical study claims to identify six recurrent models or categories

of former US presidents: the still ambitious (who long for a comeback);

exhausted volcanoes (who quietly retire); political dabblers (who give advice,

campaign and fund-raise for their party); ﬁrst citizens (who engage in dig-

niﬁed and non-partisan public service); embracers of a cause (usually a big

humanitarian and/or global ‘cause’); and seekers of vindication (those aiming

to reverse history’s likely negative verdict on them). These categories are

not watertight and individuals may at different times seem to ﬁt under a

number of these headings.

When you leave ofﬁce, Bill Clinton has said, ‘you lose your power but

not your inﬂuence’. Some writers argue that in recent decades former presi-

dents can play a bigger role and exert greater inﬂuence than in the past.

But there is still great individual variation. Age and illness (Alzheimer’s

disease) meant Reagan’s post presidency was not an active one. George

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H.W. Bush – echoing Jefferson, who said: ‘there is a fullness of time when

men should go, and not occupy too long the high ground to which others

have the right to advance’ – eschewed the limelight and busied himself

with corporate and philanthropic activities. How much he was called on

for – or offered – private advice to, or had inﬂuence with, his son, President

George W. Bush, was anyone’s guess.

Back in government

Some former leaders manage to have a continuing ministerial career, serving

in the governments of later administrations and under successor leaders. If

not ‘at the top’ they remain ‘near the top’. Being head of government may be

the culmination of their political careers but it is not the termination. Only a

minority of former leaders returns to ofﬁce in this way. Blondel could trace a

subsequent ministerial career for only 70 out of 1,028 world leaders he sur-

veyed in the post-war period (6.8 per cent).

However, the number or percent-

age of such cases may be higher in some countries than commonly supposed.

We have seen that over a quarter (27.4 per cent) of all British prime ministers

have come back after leaving Number 10 and served in the Cabinets of other

prime ministers. In Fifth Republic France since 1959 three of the 17 indi-

viduals serving as prime minister (excluding the present incumbent) served in

the governments of later PMs (17.6 per cent). The French Fifth Republic’s ﬁrst

prime minister (1959–62) Michel Debré, returned to government in 1966,

serving until 1973 under several different prime ministers and two presidents

as, successively, minister of economics and ﬁnance, foreign minister and then

defence minister. Fourteen years after leaving the Matignon Laurent Fabius

came back into government as economics minister under Lionel Jospin between

2000 and 2002. And Alain Juppé (prime minister 1995–97) was appointed

as President Sarkozy’s minister for ecology and sustainable development

in May 2007, but lost his job after only a month when he was defeated in

parliamentary elections.

In Italy the sight of a former prime minister back in government is much

more common, reﬂecting that country’s governmental instability, ‘musical

chairs’ politics and frequent ministerial rotations. To give some examples:

Emilio Colombo was prime minister 1970–72, and later twice foreign minister

(1980–83 and 1992–93); Giuliano Amato was prime minister 1992–93 and

2000–01, but served under other PMs as minister for institutional reforms

1998–99, treasury minister 1999–2000, and minister of the interior 2006–08;

Massimo D’Alema was prime minister 1998–2000 before becoming foreign

minister and deputy prime minister in Prodi’s 2006 government; Lamberto

Dini was prime minister 1995–96 and then foreign minister 1996–2001; Carlo

Ciampi, prime minister 1993–94, was treasury minister 1996–99 under two

prime ministers, and then became president of the republic; after being prime

minister twice, Andreotti was foreign minister for six years in the 1980s before

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his third and ﬁnal stint at the head of government (1989–92); Giovanni

Goria was prime minister 1987–88, returning as minister of agriculture

(1991–92) and then ﬁnance minister (1992–93).

Former prime ministers reappearing as foreign ministers can occasionally

be found in other European states, including Carl Bildt in Sweden (prime

minister 1991–94; minister of foreign affairs from 2006), Leo Tindemans in

Belgium (prime minister 1974–78; foreign minister 1982–89), and Thorbjorn

Jagland in Norway (prime minister 1996–97; foreign affairs minister 2000–01).

In Canada, Australia and New Zealand there have been few ‘returning’

prime ministers of this type. After being ousted in a party-caucus coup, Jim

Bolger, New Zealand’s National Party PM 1990–97, served brieﬂy as a junior

minister in his successor, Jenny Shipley’s, government, as minister of state

and associate minister of foreign affairs and trade, before quitting parlia-

ment in 1998. Arthur Fadden, who had a brief (two-month) spell as Aus-

tralian prime minister in 1940 and suffered a crushing election defeat a

couple of years later as opposition leader, had more success as treasurer in

the second Menzies government formed in 1949 (Menzies led the Liberal

Party and Fadden the separate Country Party) retiring in 1958. Less happy

was John Gorton’s experience: Australian Liberal PM 1968–71, he faced

an internal party challenge and lost a vote of conﬁdence but then imme-

diately stood for and won his party’s deputy leadership, forcing his successor

(William McMahon) to appoint him defence minister – tensions and clashes

led to him being sacked from the government six months later. Gorton then

served in the shadow cabinet for a couple of years under the party leader after

McMahon before being dropped, going on to quit the party altogether and

fail in his attempt to win a Senate seat as an independent.

Only two former PMs have returned to government in Canada. In the

1930s Arthur Meighen, prime minister for two short stints in the 1920s, was

minister without portfolio for three years and led for the government in the

Senate. Joe Clark was Canada’s youngest-ever prime minister at age 39 enjoy-

ing only a brief nine-month tenure as PM before his minority Progressive

Conservatives government lost the 1980 general election. Clark was deposed

as party leader in 1983. Rated as ‘below-average’ in the Canadian prime-

ministerial league tables, he rebuilt his reputation as an able, successful and

respected external affairs minister (1984–91) and then as constitutional affairs

minister (1991–93) under his successor, Brian Mulroney. Clark then left dom-

estic politics for ﬁve years before he was brought back as party leader in 1998,

winning a parliamentary seat in 2000, and ﬁnally retiring in 2003.

Other political and public ofﬁce

Even if not in government (ministerial) ofﬁce, many former leaders go on

to hold other ofﬁcial positions and continue to play an active role in public

and political life in one way or another.

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William Howard Taft would have preferred to sit on the US Supreme

Court than to be president, and after leaving the White House in 1913

he taught law at Yale before getting his chance when Warren Harding

appointed him chief justice in 1921 – and he seems to have enjoyed the

nine years he served in that post more than his one term in the presidency.

An earlier case of transition to the judicial bench was Edmund Barton,

Australia’s ﬁrst prime minister (1901–03), who had resigned to become

a judge of that country’s High Court. Bill Clinton said he did not ‘want to

be a judge’ after he left the presidency – but that was surely never remotely

an option for him and it is difﬁcult to envisage a latter-day Taft.

Article 56 of the French constitution accords former presidents the right

to sit as lifetime members on the Constitutional Council, which has impor-

tant legal and advisory functions, but this role is not compatible with hold-

ing a parliamentary seat or continued active partisanship. Jacques Chirac

sat as a member for the ﬁrst time in November 2007, only six months after

leaving ofﬁce, but Giscard D’Estaing took up his seat only in 2004, over

20 years after leaving the presidency, having been, among other things, an

MP and then MEP.

Neither Margret Thatcher nor John Major would entertain the idea of

running for mayor of London as former prime ministers, and no one would

expect Tony Blair to have held ofﬁce as mayor of Sedgeﬁeld either on his

way to Number 10 or afterwards. But a strong local or regional political base

is important for French politicians, and after leaving high national ofﬁce

they may have the compensation of power and patronage in their local or

regional ﬁefdom. After leaving the Elysée Giscard D’Estaing served as presi-

dent of the Auvergne region from 1986 to 2004. Chirac became mayor of

Paris in 1977 after his ﬁrst stint as prime minister (1974–76), holding that

post until he became president in 1995. Jacques Chaban-Delmas was prime

minister for three years (1969–72) but mayor of Bordeaux for nearly half

a century (1947–95) – he was succeeded in that post by Alain Juppé, who

continued to hold it after he in turn lost the prime-ministership in 1997.

Pierre Messmer was another long-serving regional president and town mayor

for nearly 20 years after stepping down as PM in the 1970s. Raymond Barre

started an elected career only after being prime minister (1976–81), becom-

ing a deputy in the National Assembly and later serving as mayor of Lyon

1995–2001. Pierre Mauroy had been mayor of Lille for eight years before

becoming socialist prime minister in 1981 and continued to be the city’s

mayor for 17 years after he left that national ofﬁce in 1984.

Five years after losing the French presidency Giscard D’Estaing appar-

ently had hopes of becoming prime minister during the ﬁrst ‘cohabitation’

of the Mitterrand years (1986–88), but lost out to Chirac. The focus of ambi-

tion is more usually in the other direction: two French prime ministers went

on to become president (Pompidou and Chirac), while another seven PMs

were either formal candidates for the presidency or else campaigned or

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manoeuvred within their parties in attempts to be put on the slate. The

average Fifth Republic prime minister, quitting that ofﬁce in his mid-ﬁfties,

knows that half of the presidents assumed the country’s topmost ofﬁce in

their sixties and served into their mid to late-seventies.

Only one former US president has ever been re-elected to that ofﬁce,

Grover Cleveland in 1892, though three others ran again unsuccessfully,

including Theodore Roosevelt, who stood on a third-party ticket in 1912,

splitting the Republican vote and letting in Woodrow Wilson. A couple

more hoped, but failed, to gain their party’s nomination, including Hoover

in 1936. The 22nd Amendment, ratiﬁed in 1951, prevents anyone from being

elected president more than twice, so a come back is not possible for Bill

Clinton or George W. Bush. However, after losing the presidency in 1976,

Gerald Ford did not rule out a return to top-ﬂight national politics. ‘Anybody

who is dumb enough to leave the happy and useful life of an elder statesman

is not smart enough to be president’, was one caustic media comment about

Ford in 1980. He decided not to ﬁght for the Republican nomination – Ronald

Reagan, whom he disliked, was unstoppable. But Ford considered accepting

Reagan’s offer of the vice-presidential nomination, only for negotiations to

break down over his bid for a virtual ‘co-presidency’ with a greatly expanded

vice-presidential role, powers and status.

In the 19th century a few former US presidents went back into elective

politics in a way their modern equivalents do not seem to have considered

– they ran for legislative ofﬁce. John Quincy Adams was elected to the House

of Representatives in 1831 and spent 17 years as a congressman, and a lead-

ing abolitionist; Andrew Johnson became a US Senator in 1875, but died

only months into his term; and John Tyler became a member of the Con-

federacy’s Provisional Congress and won election to the South’s House of

Representatives but died in 1862 before taking his seat there.

The way in which former British prime ministers have frequently continued

to play a role in public life from the House of Lords has inﬂuenced some

American supporters of the idea of giving former US presidents a seat in the

Senate as ‘senators-for-life’. Versions of this scheme have been put forward

since the 19th century. After he left the White House Harry Truman suggested

making former presidents non-voting ‘free members of Congress’, able to take

part in debates on the ﬂoor of the Senate and the House of Representatives

and to participate in congressional committees. Other ideas have been ﬂoated:

making former presidents members of a ‘consultative council of state’ to

advise and assist the incumbent president, or to create a ‘national council … a

House of Experience’, with former presidents, former chief justices and former

House of Representatives speakers – a forum where big, long-term issues could

be discussed by people who are no longer seeking votes. Presidents John

F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush expressed scepticism about

this sort of innovation. The counter argument is former presidents have

plenty of other ways of publicly airing their views and that if the incumbent

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wants to tap the experience, advice and judgement of a predecessor it is

usually best done on a personal, informal and private basis. The US Senate

in 1963 amended its rules to allow former presidents to address that body

‘upon formal written notice to the presiding ofﬁcer’ but, so far, none has

made a formal address.

On the other side of the Atlantic a proposal to appoint former French

presidents as senators-for-life was soon sunk when critics pointed out it

would grant Jacques Chirac permanent parliamentary immunity from the

corruption scandals dogging his Paris mayoralty. Giscard D’Estaing stayed

out of politics for several years after he lost the presidency in 1981, but then

came back at the regional level and won a seat in the National Assembly.

Many former French prime ministers stay in politics as deputies or senators

– some for a long time. Couve de Murville was a deputy and then a senator

for over 25 years after his one-year term as prime minister; Pierre Messmer

stayed on in parliament for 14 years and Raymond Barre was a deputy

for 20 years after leaving the PM’s ofﬁce. Fabius was twice chairman of the

National Assembly after he resigned as prime minister; Édouard Balladur

presided over its foreign affairs commission. In Germany, although Schroder

resigned his seat in the Bundestag on leaving ofﬁce as chancellor, his pre-

decessors stayed in parliament: Kohl and Schmidt for four years, Kiesinger

for 11 years, while Brandt remained head of his party, the SPD, for 13 years

after he resigned as chancellor, and kept his seat in the Bundestag.

Some outgoing leaders do not have the chance to stay in parliament

– their governments not only go down to election defeat but they lose their

own seats, as did Kim Campbell in Canada in 1993 (her party reduced to only

two seats in a massive landslide defeat) and John Howard in Australia in 2007.

Balfour was the last British PM to suffer this experience in 1906. Three recent

Australian PMs resigned from parliament more or less immediately after

losing ofﬁce: Malcolm Fraser in 1983, Bob Hawke in 1991 (after being ousted

in a party coup) and Paul Keating in 1996; in recent decades McMahon was

unusual in staying on as a backbencher for ten years after he lost the premier-

ship. In Canada Diefenbaker was something of an outlying case, serving

for four years as leader of the opposition after his government lost the 1963

election, and then remaining in parliament for 12 more years, well into his

eighties, after he was overthrown in a party leadership convention.

Rejected or forced out at home, some former government leaders in Euro-

pean states ﬁnd another berth in Brussels – becoming active in politics at the

EU level. Those elected as MEPs at various times include, from France, Giscard

D’Estaing and Michel Rocard; ex-German chancellor Willy Brandt; former

Italian PMs Emilio Colombo (who was president of the European parlia-

ment 1977–79) and Giovanni Goria; former Belgian PMs Jean-Luc Dehaene,

Wilfried Martens and Leo Tindemens; and former Danish PMs Rasmussen

and Schlüter. Former French prime minister, Edith Cresson, removed by

Mitterrand after only a year in ofﬁce in 1992, went on to serve as an EU

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