"If the criterion of leadership is sparkling intelligence, resilience, victory in elections and flexibility, together with a willingness to fight one's own Party when one has little choice, then Wilson certainly has a claim to have been the best leader Labour ever had. But in Wilson the flexibility was too heavily prized and the willingness to fight too seldom in evidence. He totally failed in the role to which he himself made his principal claim, as a regenerator of the British economy. It was fortunate for the Labour party and the country that Wilson retired when he did. His time as Prime Minister had been a time of economic crisis. On the face of it he had been as well equipped as anyone could be to handle the frightening economic problems with which he had been confronted. Yet he had never given any evidence that he had thought deeply about the country's predicament. He had exhausted his credit with foreign governments and with central banks which might, in the near future, be requested to help suck the UK out of the bog into which it had fallen. He now lacked the strength, and the reputation, to handle yet one more economic crisis. Whatever he had achieved, he would not see a socialist Britain in his lifetime. But he would have been surprised if he had, not necessarily pleasantly. At least, in retirement, he had no reason to fear conspiracies by his Cabinet colleagues."