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“... the same reason as other quiet revolutions in British politics: the threat of an empty till. As Denis Healey told the IMF in the Letter of Intent, ‘an essential element of the Government’s strategy will be a continuing and substantial reduction in the share of resources required for the public sector. It is also essential to reduce the Public ...”

“... before it was torn up and thrown on the scrapheap. The decision to kill the project was taken by Denis Healey, who bitterly remarked later that Wilson had made him put off the announcement for nine weeks, to smuggle it into the Chancellor’s Budget speech: a delay which cost £1 million a week. (It might help to know that people then lived decently on ...”

“... in power is a juicy might-have-been. The governing philosophy of the Labour Party used to be, as Denis Healey once said, ‘to erode by inches the conditions that produce avoidable misery’. It would have been good, not least as a corrective to the excesses of the Thatcher years, for a party espousing that philosophy to be in power. But Smith ...”

“... most of its contemporary representatives are poor at speaking and reasoning, with no sign of what Denis Healey called a ‘hinterland’ – and that this has been simultaneous with a collapse in respect. Is Chris Bryant an exception? Labour MP for Rhondda since 2001, he is a former deputy leader of the House of Commons and, until becoming shadow ...”

“... of whisky and ginger ale, ‘but she was never drunk,’ and she did not get through as much as Denis, who could more or less subsist on gin. She didn’t have hangovers and she didn’t get ill (she sometimes had toothache). Her skin continued to glow and her eye remained fierce. More striking than the amount of sleep she needed was her ability to sleep at ...”

“... and the Labour Party. But it will be only down to good fortune if they are. He has also, unlike Denis Healey, his Labour predecessor, been lucky with the international economy. Brown’s decision to hand over much of the direction of the economy to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England is thought to have been a brilliant stroke. But it ...”

“... In conversations with Wilson’s former colleagues, Beckett finds near universal contempt. Denis Healey says: ‘He was a terrible prime minister, actually.’ Gavyn Davies, then a Downing Street adviser, remembers him as bored and ‘slightly an absentee prime minister’. Drink got him through the day: ‘Brandy from midday till late ...”

“... dies. I never met him, though I saw him once in the street, noting then that he shared a walk with Denis Healey, both of them swinging their arms laterally as they walked in the manner of Soviet soldiery. Except I fancy Clark swung his arms more slowly than Healey, this putting him in a slightly King of the Apes ...”

“... the sentences. His paper powers to do so were smartly taken away by the Prime Minister urged on by Denis Healey. When the Berlin airlift ended without there being any change in the status of Germany or Berlin, the fate of Hess was sealed for a very long time, perhaps for ever. After the departure of Speer and Von Schirach from Spandau the ‘Freedom for ...”

“... authority was enhanced accordingly. The difference between this election and the manner in which Denis Healey became Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, by a fraction of a per cent of nothing in particular, was an object lesson in itself. It needs constantly to be recalled that the SDP is astonishingly new. This was its first election of a leader, and ...”

“... They’ve crucified him once. It felt quite nice. No reason why it shouldn’t happen twice ... Healey, meanwhile, turns beetroot red with rage, His jowls so vibrant he can hardly speak. The right ideas, the right looks, the right age – And yet his place is filled by an antique. While fools ensure a once-proud heritage Goes down a tube that comes out up ...”