Ingerland My Ingerland: The Prime Ministers Who Made Me

Harold Macmillan (Conservative. PM: 1957-1963)
Eton College; Balliol College, Oxford

I was born during Macmillan's premiership. A one-nation, patrician Tory, he's probably best remembered for saying 'You've never had it so good.' And guess what- he was correct! Lying in my pram on the comfortable northern side of West Midlans suburbia, I didn't have a care in the world. During the day I was taken to mom's hairdressing salonto be passed around giggling, sweet-scented young women who kissed and petted me as they sat beneath the free-standing industrial hair dryers. How lucky was I in life's lottery ?

Alec Douglas-Home (Conservative. PM: 1963-1964)
Eton College; Christ Church, Oxford.

Douglas-Home is now only of interest as the obscure answer to an obscure politics question in a pub quiz. But what did I care ? There was a field next to our house, owned by a friendly farmer. I spent my days running free, building dens out of hay stacks, investigating the curious animals and insects that lived there, dreaming of my future life as a soldier/astronaut/secret agent, like my hero Captain Scarlet.

Harold Wilson (Labour. PM: 1964-1970)
Royds Hall Grammar School; Jesus College, Oxford

Gruff, pipe-smoking Yorkshireman Harold spoke in a strange, whiny, nasal northern voice unfamiliar to the strange, whiny, nasal Brummie dialects I was used to. But all was forgiven when England won the world cup in 1966! God bless Harold! God bless England! By now my hero was Geoff Hurst, not Captain Scarlet. At school I broke my collar bone while trying to do a handstand and Melanie Fisher gave me a kiss in order to help my shoulder get better. Melanie's kiss triggered all kinds of new, indelicate emotions that began to open a secret door into a hitherto unknown adult realm.

Ted Heath (Conservative. PM: 1970-1974)
Chatham House Grammar School; Balliol College, Oxford

He was something of a mystery was Ted. He seemed different. I couldn't work him out. With a grin as broad as a Cheshire Cat, the television showed him not puffing on a pipe or sitting in smoke-filled, beer-stained trades union meetings, but conducting orchestras and sailing a grand yacht called Morning Cloud. Where was Mrs Heath I wondered ? The secret door opened an inch or two wider.

Harold Wilson (Labour. PM: 1974-1976)
Royds Hall Grammar School; Jesus College, Oxford

Gruff, pipe-smoking Harold returned. But not for long. A conspiracy theory has since emerged suggesting that Mountbatten and other military figures were plotting a coup. What ? A coup ? Not here in Britain - cradle of democracy, victor of WW2, blessed by God 'imself - surely ? Coups only happened in far-away African and South American countries. But whatever the story was, Harold unexpectedly - and to the great surprise of the nation - stepped down. No more world cups for us, then.

Jim Callaghan (Labour. PM: 1976-1979)
Portsmouth Northern School

Jim Callaghan always reminded me of a harmless, cuddly family member, wandering aimlessly around a zoo. This was the time of the Three Day Week - maximum industrial disruption. The UK wasn't, it seemed, the happy, coherent family of classes I was led to believe it was. Watch out Uncle Jim, I wanted to shout. There are rabid beasts creeping up from behind! Rabid beasts from the Right and Left. They've got sharp claws and are foaming at the mouth! They're dangerous, Uncle Jim! They're gonna savage us all! Do something Uncle Jim! Do something! Oh dear, too late...

Margaret Thatcher (Conservative. PM: 1979-1990)
Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School; Somerville College, Oxford

The rabid Right Wing authoritarian beast that sneaked up behind the country was a condescending, sanctimonious grocer's daughter with a voice like Cruella de Ville's mad mother. I loathed her, in the same way that she, I'm sure, would have loathed me had we met. Industrial Britain was dismantled; the social contract ripped up; communities extinguished; a severe monetarist experiment forcibly imposed. People, unsurprisingly, became very, very angry. During the Thatcher years I went on marches, held placards, and fell out with friends (usually well-heeled friends from the south of England) who saw the old witch as some kind of benign, liberating angel. One night five of us carried out a covert operation and spray painted the pristine white wall of the local Conservative Association building with anti-Tory graffiti. Our handiwork was reported on the front page of the local newspaper. It was the finest moment of my short-lived career as a political activist. Yes, dear young ones - I can proudly say that I did my bit.

John Major (Conservative. PM: 1990-1997)
Rutlish Grammar School

After the horror of Thatcher came the sleaze-ball comedy of Prime Minister Major. You really couldn't have made it up. The Major years were like a Brian Rix farce orchestrated in a funereal minor key. John always looked to me slightly out of kilter - the ultimate yes-man wheeled onto the public stage by a shadowy cabal in order to carry out dirty deeds he didn't quite comprehend. A couple of years into the first Major government I grabbed hold of an opportunity to leave the UK and promptly moved to Europe. Remarkably, no one in Europe seemed to think the UK was the centre of the universe. Rather, my new colleagues saw Britain as a place fashioned in the image of Dickens' Miss Haversham - ie, living in the dusty grandeur of a long forgotten past. I read a lot of Dickens during my 10 years in exile. I concluded that if John Major were a Dickens character he'd be Nathaniel Winkle.

Tony Blair (Labour. PM: 1997-2007)
Fettes College; St John's College, Oxford

Enter the wonderful Tony, saviour of the UK. Young, energetic Tony who was going to re-shape the country into a vibrant, modern 21st century society. Who can not feel a twinge of emotion on looking at the photos of Tony and Cherie's triumphant entry into Downing Street ? A new dawn, a new vision, a break with the nasty, discredited, sleaze-induced past. I returned to the UK six years into the Blair revolution. By then, Tony's halo had been well and truly tarnished. The invasion of Iraq, carried out on the basis of Colin Powell's fuzzy satellite images of a Baghdad garden shed, proved to be the catalyst for a collapse of trust in our political leaders. Tony slowly transformed into a Neo-Con cyborg, his power slipping away with each election, an easy target for a Conservative Party haunted by the 1997 election result and the very real nightmare that the 'natural party of government' might never form a government again. When Blair stepped down there were few tears along with many calls for him to be given a one-way ticket to the Hague. Certainly, there were no tears from me. In fact, I'd have willingly chipped in for his air fare to the War Crimes Tribunal.

Gordon Brown (Labour. ZPM: 2007-2010)
Kirkcaldy High School; University of Edinburgh

I liked Gordon Brown. He reminded me a little of Jim Callaghan. Brown, as chancellor, had proved to be a safe pair of hands. What's more, it was his destiny to become PM - he'd cut a deal with Blair in an Islington restaurant. I always thought Brown's heart was in the right place. He was concerned about world poverty, about world inequality, about 'levelling up' before 'levelling up' became a meaningless political catch-phrase. They were all character traits that didn't endear him to Britain's right wing press, who were all at his throat as soon as he crossed the threshold of No 10. Gordon, though, had one other major character 'defect' that put him at odds with the Westminster establishment: he was Scottish. He was Edinburgh not Oxford; he wasn't 'one of us.' Early on in his premiership Brown made a strategic mistake: he missed his chance to call an early election, displaying an absence of that narcissistic ruthlessness that is the mark of a true leader. Brown's fate was sealed when he was overheard calling a bigoted middle aged northern woman a bigot. Poor old Gordon, caught out by a - planted ? - hot mic. A sad end for someone who wanted to save the world. I liked Gordon Brown.

David Cameron (Conservative. PM: 2010-2016)
Eton College; Brasenose College, Oxford.

I didn't like Call-me-Dave, though - snake charmer, oil salesman, Bullington Boy Dave. He began as a true blue version of Tony Blair: young  fishy, youthful, tactile Dave, posing with huskies, spouting a green agenda. A new kind of modern Tory. Of course, once he was PM all of that guff went straight out of the window. Austerity was Dave's true game, as well as welcoming Russian oligarchs with golden visas. His piece de resistance was helping to dump the UK out of the EU, and dividing the country to the point of no return. Well done Dave. You don't hear much from him these days, except when he's discovered trying to stuff millions of pounds into his account through dodgy deals. He's got a nice artisan shed though. It's probably got a big picture of his heroine, the blessed Margaret, hanging on the wall. And a ceramic pig's head on the desk. He'll be back sometime in the not too distant future, I'm sure - as a contestant on 'I'm a Celebrity' perhaps...something more in tune with his vast array on non-talents.

Theresa May (Conservative. PM: 2016-2019)
Wheatley Park School; St Hugh's College, Oxford

Theresa May won me money! In those whirlwind days after the EU referendum and Cameron's resignation I placed a few quid on May becoming the next Tory leader. After that it was all downhill. Two incidents stand out from the three years of humiliation that followed: May being unceremoniously summoned by the DUP as she sat down for an EU-UK summit meeting; and her gawky, 'Dancing Queen' entrance to the 2017 Tory Conference, which was even more disturbing than her antics at the 2017 Tory Conference, during which she was served her P45 by a comedian. But the vicar's daughter continues to carry a curious interest. I've often wondered about those clunky, chunky, Brutalist chain necklaces she always seems to wear. What's all that about, Theresa ? Eh ? Theresa ? What's all that about ?

Boris Johnson (Conservative. PM:2019-soon)
Eton College; Balliol College, Oxford.

And so we come to lying Blubbernaut Johnson. Whenever I see this clown I'm reminded of a famous evolutionary image - you know the one, in which several semi-naked figures show the development of humankind from Homo habilis, to Homo erectus, to Neanderthal, and finally Homo sapiens. Sometimes there's a jokey version in which the final image is that of an office worker slumped across his desk, providing an ironically delineating curve from the hunched, primitive figure at the start. With Boris Johnson the evolutionary table of British Prime Ministers seems to have been turned on its head. During my lifetime we've travelled from pragmatic, unflappable, aristocratic Harold Macmillan to a fat blonde monkey hanging from a zip-wire. If it's true that Bozo's marching orders are about to be issued, directly from the cauldron in the 1922 Committee's office, then let's hope that an election soon follows and the UK's post-Brexit political pond life is re-filled with more honest  less self-serving creatures. But don't hold your breath. The national mindset still seems to be intoxicated with the past. We'll most likely end up with the honourable member for the 18th century as our next PM. Scary, I know. But I'd put money on it.