The Cancelled Prime Minister

How the first working-class politician to reach Britain’s highest office was brought down, and his legacy disparaged.

Ramsay MacDonald was born and raised an illegitimate child in Moray county, north-east Scotland. When he left school at fourteen, he seemed bound to follow in his ploughman father’s footsteps. Instead he would be UK Prime Minister—the first Labour Prime Minister, a friend of George V, and a star on the world stage. How did he get there from his Highland bothy? Why has he been erased from political memory? And how did this man of the left end up leading a Conservative-dominated National Government?

MacDonald’s was an elusive, Celtic personality; it has been easier to criticise him than to understand him. The Cancelled Prime Minister demystifies this fascinating politician, dismissing the common charge of treacherous ambition and tracing MacDonald’s personal odyssey—including half a life spent in undying grief for his wife Margaret, a remarkable feminist and social reformer lost young to blood poisoning.

History has been unkind to MacDonald, and most often written with politically hostile pens. Drawing extensively on his private diaries, this biography restores a towering figure to the record of his century, and reveals the full essence of a complex man—one not without faults, but able and honourable, with deep and widespread interests.