"Ramsay was a simpler character than Baldwin, though he did not look it. He too was complicated, but not by S. B.'s desire to seem plain. A 'blend of cosmopolitan distinction and Scottish sense', Harold Nicolson called him, and no greater contrast with his predecessor could have been penned... [T]he key to him was the commonest in human nature—illusion, our stick and carrot. He had an overdose of incentive and I wished him joy of it, though joy he never got... Ramsay really was persuaded with H. G. Wells that 'our true nationality is mankind'... He really did believe that men were naturally good, that they could be brought into line though they looked like horses at a starting-gate for ever facing opposite ways and savaging each other. He had faith in every panacea... He really did hope that politics were a glittering but not endless adventure, especially in foreign affairs where he trusted to magic solutions round green baize... He really did believe that the grumpy wurrld found felicity by its firesides—he overdid firesides—and that he could make it happier still by catching it there. He really did persuade himself, especially on his feet, that we have some appointment with a star, and would rise to it by better ways than class-war, which he called 'pre-socialist and pre-scientific'... In short and in his own words he held that we were eternally moving in a surge toward righteousness... [He was] nearer to the Liberals than of his extremists. He was less absorbed in Socialism than in international events."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomAcademics from the United KingdomLabour Party (UK) politiciansPresbyteriansPoliticians from Scotland
Original Language: English
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Sources
Lord Vansittart, The Mist Procession (1958), pp. 373-375
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ramsay_MacDonald
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Ramsay MacDonald
Ramsay MacDonald (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British statesman who was the first ever Labour Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, leading a Labour Government in 1924, a Labour Government from 1929 to 1931, and a National Government from 1931 to 1935.
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