Jim Callaghan's greatest achievement was to be himself

The government’s recent, palpable turn to the right seems to be gaining pace. In the past few weeks, Keir Starmer has slashed overseas aid, proposed a radical downsizing of the civil service, abolished NHS England and vowed to make serious cuts to welfare. As the Labour left pick up their weapons and prepare to do battle, conservative commentators are lauding the Prime Minister as being ‘to the Right of the Tories’ and cheering him on.

For all his quiet bonhomie, Callaghan never flinched from levelling with the public when it counted

The situation calls to mind an earlier Labour prime minister who died exactly 20 years ago today and took his government in a similar direction: Jim Callaghan. Callaghan led his party and the country in that chaotic quasi-interregnum between the resignation of Harold Wilson in March 1976 and the accession of Margaret Thatcher three years later – a period when the economy tanked, Britain went begging for a huge IMF loan, and the country descended into the industrial havoc of the Winter of Discontent.