Page "Clement Attlee" Paragraph 95

His leadership style of consensual government, acting as a chairman rather than a president, won him much praise from historians and politicians alike.

Christopher Soames, Britain's Ambassador to France during the government of Edward Heath and cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, remarked that " Mrs. Thatcher was not really running a team.

Every time you have a Prime Minister who wants to make all the decisions, it mainly leads to bad results.

Attlee didn't.

That's why he was so damn good.

" Even Thatcher herself wrote in her 1995 memoirs, which charted her beginnings in Grantham to her victory in the 1979 General Election, that she admired Attlee, writing: " Of Clement Attlee, however, I was an admirer.

He was a serious man and a patriot.

Quite contrary to the general tendency of politicians in the 1990s, he was all substance and no show ".