Tag Archives: james callaghan

Are politicians really getting younger?

“The worship of youth has diminished – perhaps generally – in recent years.” So said Vince Cable a couple of weeks ago in a newspaper interview which inflamed speculation he’d be partial to a tilt at leading the Lib Dems. It also prompted various politicians-are-getting-younger pieces in the media.

LibDemVoice’s Mark Pack took the time and trouble to dig out the data. He showed that while the trend-line in the first half of the last century was for prime ministers to get older, in the 50 years since there has been a movement towards younger premiers (James Callaghan being …

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Daily View 2×2: 30 March 2010

Today just 2250 years ago, the first sighting of what we now know as Halley’s Comet was recorded Eric Clapton becomes eligible to draw his pension, whilst it’s also ‘Happy Birthday’ to fellow sexagenarians Robbie Coltrane (60), Eddie Jordan (62) and Mervyn King (63).

Once this day in 1978, the Conservative Party announced it had recruited advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi to revamp its image and get its political message across ahead of the General Election. Politicians both within the opposition and in Prime Minister Jim Callaghan’s government criticised the Tory stance, describing it as ‘frivolous’.

Fourteen years later we saw John Major climb onto his soapbox to urge voters in Cheltenham to elect John Taylor as their MP – a mission which resulted in the election of Lib Dem Nigel Jones.

Posted in Daily View and News | Also tagged , , , , , , , and | 3 Comments
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  • Tristan Ward
    Britain and the rest of Europe need to spend more money on defence - and fast. The USA seem ready to walk away from the post 1945 security settlement (lets not...
  • nvelope2003
    Interesting how the oh so clever like to boost their image by making patronising comments. At least I had the grace to make a full apology as soon as I was able...
  • Peter Davies
    @John Marriott. Not many people think a billion is a hundred million. There are still plenty who think it's a million million (the original meaning). The popula...
  • Joseph Bourke
    ‘Pax Americana' superceded Pax Britannica (the relative peace between the great powers in the time period roughly bounded by the Napoleonic Wars and World War...
  • Simon R
    @Steve Trevethan: Might you possibly be confusing 'Donald Trump' with 'The USA'? :-) What Trump says, believes, and does is in many respects not like what many...