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    Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had?
    Unavailable
    Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had?
    Unavailable
    Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had?
    Ebook665 pages12 hours

    Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had?

    By Michael Jago

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Despite his tenure of three of the four Great Offices of State, his popularity with the electorate and the truly revolutionary 1944 Education Act that bears his name, Richard Austen ‘Rab’ Butler narrowly missed out on the premiership on three separate occasions during his political career, earning him the sobriquet that has attached to his name ever since - The Best Prime Minister That Britain Never Had. Banished from the inner council of the War Cabinet for his support of appeasement, Butler used his time as Education Minister wisely to emerge as the progressive face of the post-war Tory Party, going on to spend four years at the Treasury before the gradual but relentless eclipse of his career after Anthony Eden’s accession. Was Butler an over-ambitious, condescending intellectual who had antagonised enough colleagues in the course of his career to ensure he would ultimately be thwarted? Or did he simply not want the leadership enough? Could this liberal Tory, in tune with the electorate, have led the Conservatives to victory in the 1964 election? In this robust and insightful biography of the great nearly-man of British politics, bestselling author Michael Jago looks to answer whether Rab Butler really was ‘The Best Prime Minister We Never Had’.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBiteback Publishing
    Release dateOct 20, 2015
    ISBN9781785900051
    Unavailable
    Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had?
    Author

    Michael Jago

    Michael Jago read Ancient History and Philosophy at University College, Oxford, before settling in the USA in 1980. For fifteen years he ran an educational travel business, focusing on the battlefields of Western Europe. Previously a publisher and editor of a number of journals, he now specialises in biography. Previous publications include The Man Who Was George Smiley: The Life of John Bingham, Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister (shortlisted for the 2015 Paddy Power Political Biography of the Year Award) and Rab Butler: The Best Prime Minister We Never Had?, published by Biteback in 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively. He lives in both Chicago and south-west France.

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