Last night’s Newsnight showed Denis Healey’s final broadcast interview. Asked whether he regretted not becoming Prime Minister, having become regarded as the best PM the country never had. He replied:
‘I do now, but I never wanted to be Prime Minister, because I wanted to do something rather than be something. But of course, I didn’t realise when I said that, that if you want to do something, it’s more important to be PM than to be Foreign Secretary or Defence Secretary.’
the wilderness years 