Why Sunak looks a ‘tail-end’ PM for the Conservatives

FORMER European Commission president, and UK cabinet minister, Roy Jenkins, famously coined the phrase “tail-end Charlies” to describe beleaguered prime ministers who come into office at the end of a long period of rule by their parties.

This tail-ender prime ministerial club is one which quite often forms a bookend with a new political era. Membership includes Alec Douglas-Home (the Conservative premier from 1963-64 who ushered in the Labour prime ministership of Harold Wilson); Jim Callaghan (the Labour prime minister from 1976-79 who was followed into office by Conservative Margaret Thatcher); and John Major (the Conservative premier from 1990-97 who Labour’s Tony Blair followed into 10 Downing Street).

Douglas-Home’s defeat in 1964 was the end of 13 years of Conservative rule after a series of scandals; the Tories had 18 years in power before 1997 with the last half-decade in office marred by internal political infighting after the Black Wednesday economic debacle in 1992. Meanwhile, Labour had been in power for much of the decade and a half before Callaghan lost power in 1979 after major economic challenges.