Anthony Crosland

And you can't complain about if there's a by-election for a death.

And I remember going back in history in 1977, there was a by-election on the same day in Grimsby where the late, great Tony Crosland had died.

And there was also one in Ashfield in West Midlands where a MP went off to be European commissioner.

And Labour held on to the Crosland seat, but lost the one when the person that's in terms swanned off to a European job.

Then we have a general election in 1964, which brings Labour to power, Wilson.

And his education secretary is Anthony Crosland.

And Crosland rejects some key features of the Robbins Report.

And instead of Black bringing teacher training colleges into the universities, making them part of the universities, he takes a different view and sets on this path of establishing, I think, 30 polytechnics.

So John Healy is very keen for this budget to be seen as... a package that recognises where the last government went wrong, particularly on tax and particularly on business.

But of course, the other difficulty is, and this is where Andy Haldane's criticism is more awkward and precarious for both Number 10 and the Treasury, it is absolutely true that Andy Burnham believes public control, a bigger state, a stronger state, and this is what John Healy was talking to me about when he was talking about his admiration for For Anthony Crosland in the 1970s, who had been a great Labour revisionist in the 50s and came to the view in the 70s that actually a strong strategic state that did nationalise key sectors of the economy was required to balance and make space for a dynamic private sector.

So they can hardly say to Andy Haldane, well, listen, we're not a big state government because they manifestly are.

They're a business-friendly socialist government.

So just to give you some history of the men.

So you have Tony Crosland, Dennis Healey and Roy Jenkins were three incredibly influential figures of post-war Labour politics.

with three very different personalities, which is where, in some respects, you can find that that's how the play will work, because there's all this conflict.

If they were like three seemingly kind of like-minded people, it would have been quite a boring play, to be fair.

You love your history.

You love your politics.

But do you need to know your Roy Jenkins from your Tony Crosland? And do you need to know who Dennis Healy is in order to enjoy this? Or is it a case of doing your political homework before you go? Can you see this cold?

Yeah, I think so.

So just to go back a step.

So four or five months ago, I gave a speech in which I basically said – to misquote Tony Crosland in 1973, where you and I are probably the only people who have enough to remember, the party's over.

And the party's over in the sense that the Premier League and the EFL last negotiated a relationship in 2019, and that ran out in 2024.

They were due to renegotiate it.

Third way theorists like Antony Giddens said that they reject the state socialist conception of pure socialism.

and accepts the concept of socialism conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views the democratic governments as having achieved ethical socialism.

So basically social justice warrior stuff.

Removing the unfair elements of capitalism with a welfare system and policies that contemporary socialism has outgrown from the Marxist claim to abolish capitalism.

you know,

Dan mentioned Peter Mandelson, MP for Hartlepool, Anthony Crosland, MP for Grimsby, like these kind of...

David Miliband, Tony Blair.

Yeah, exactly.

One final thought from me today in London.

I am off tonight to the, the King's Head Theatre in the People's Republic of Islington to see The Gang of Three, um, a play about the relationship between Denis Healey, Roy Jenkins, and Anthony Crosland, which starts, I believe, in 1972, uh, over that seminal vote to go into the European Economic Community when 69 Labour MPs defied a three-line whip.

Now, there were three individuals who, whatever you thought of them, were always across their brief.

Absolutely.

And this week, as always, I'd like to start with a bit of a quote.

Um, and this week's was, "For the time being at least, the party is over." And that's from Anthony Crosland, Secretary of State for the Environment, who at the time was also the Housing Minister.

Interesting that, because I used to do it back then.

Addressing local government in 1975.