Page "Alfred Robens, Baron Robens of Woldingham" Paragraph 4

In opposition, Robens continued to rise in the party, being appointed shadow Foreign Secretary by Clement Attlee, and starting to be considered as a future candidate for party leader.

Robens himself " yearned to become Prime Minister ".

However, Robens failed to impress during the Suez crisis of 1956 and party leader Gaitskell felt him too left wing.

He was replaced as shadow foreign secretary by Aneurin Bevan and felt that his political ambitions had been frustrated.

Thus, in 1960, when Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan offered him the chairmanship of the National Coal Board ( NCB ) he accepted enthusiastically.

Gaitskell died two years later and Tweedale has expressed the view that, had he persisted in politics, Robens, rather than Harold Wilson, would likely have become Prime Minister.