Top Ten Political Dinner Guests, Past and Present - 3 comments

Paul Burgin has invited me to select 10 major party leaders since 1945 (living or dead) I might invite to dinner. Well, here's my list, and my reasoning.

By the way, for those in the list who died recently, I'm imagining them being, not their diminished selves, but themself as they were while they were leader, and/or in their prime. So, a 1982-era Roy Jenkins would turn up, a 1980 Michael Foot, a 1976 Jim Callaghan, a 1970 Wilson, though a present-day Hague and Blair - if that makes sense.

• Clement Attlee [1935-55] - A great man, with achievements outside politics, and a proud record of achievement from 1945-51.
  
• Winston Churchill [1940-55] - A legendary raconteur, and some other bits and bobs.
  
• Hugh Gaitskell [1955-1963] - Highly intelligent moderniser (that loaded term) - our Tony would have a few things to talk to him about.
  
• Harold Macmillan [1957-63] - The last Keynesian Tory PM?
  
• Harold Wilson [1963-76] - Beer, football, 'the establishment', and post-war politics.
  
• James Callaghan [1976-80] - I'd ask the 1976 Jim what his ideas were for Britain in the 80s and 90s.
  
• Michael Foot [1980-83] - Great anecdotes about the 1930s.
  
• Roy Jenkins [1982-3] - Could talk about the Jenkins Commission; plus, he's not one of the two Davids.
  
• Tony Blair [1994-date] - So many Why?s. Plus: are you a man or a kind of god?
  
• William Hague [1997-2001] - Could entertainingly discuss Enlightenment-era politics - with me, if nobody else fancied it.
  

I fear I would have to insist on no smoking throughout the evening. That smoking in a confined place is impolite and unhealthy is one of the first things dead political leaders of the past should realise when brought back to life and catapaulted forward to 2006.