241. Supermac: you've never had it so good

Macmillan overcame the terrible legacy of the Suez catastrophe and, running an economy focused on growth to fund increasing living standards, giving him the opportunity to annouce that people had never had it so good. That reflect both a genuine concern with eliminating poverty and as an effective electoral strategy, pulled off the trick by increasing the Conservative majority in its third consecutive general election win in 1959.

Meanwhile, in the Labour Party, in opposition, the left-right split was causing serious dissension, with Nye Bevan leading the left and winning great support for his brilliance and his charisma, but a lot of criticism too for the damage done by views that were sometimes extremist. His group of troublemakers included the young and ambitious Harold Wilson. He, however, when he realised that aligning with the left wing was getting him nowhere, drifted rightwards, ending up by taking Bevan’s seat on the Labour Shadow Cabinet instead of backing his resignation from it. He then supported the rightwinger Gaitskell’s campaign to become Labour leader against Bevan.

Macmillan found himself facing Gaitskell and Wilson in opposition to him as his continued dash for economic growth, alongside fear or inflation and pressure on the currency, led to his alternating between periods of economic relaxation and periods of retrenchment. Gaitskell and Wilson denounced ‘boom and bust’ economics.

Things were beginning to turn nasty for Macmillan. But we haven’t seen how nasty yet.

Illustration: Supermac as seen by Vicky Public Domain.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License