The Labour party should finally grow up about Ramsay MacDonald and his conduct
The subtitle of Walter Reid’s biography of James Ramsay MacDonald refers to ‘the extraordinary rise and tragic fall’ of Labour’s first prime minister. The rise was not especially extraordinary. In the first decades of the 20th century several people from relatively humble backgrounds – David Lloyd George and John Burns from outside MacDonald’s party, and Philip Snowden and Arthur Henderson (to give just two examples) from within it – reached the top or very near the top of British politics. But did MacDonald have a tragic fall? He was prime minister for six of the last eight years of his life; a cabinet minister to within six months of his
