Roy Hattersley, the former Labour deputy leader, has died, with Sir Keir Starmer leading tributes to his “decades of service.”
Known as Labour’s “nearly man,” he failed to gain the leadership of the party he loved and spent more than two decades of his 33 years as an MP on the opposition benches.
Prime Minister Sir Keir wrote on X: “Roy Hattersley was a giant of the Labour movement.
“Through decades of service, including as deputy leader and a minister, he never lost his belief in a more equal Britain.
“My thoughts are with his wife Maggie and his family.”
Mr Hattersley spent much of the party’s wilderness years of the 1980s battling to keep it together just as ideological infighting threatened to tear it apart.
He was credited with helping to steer the party away from the policies which had made it unelectable in the eyes many voters – including its support for unilateral nuclear disarmament and its opposition to the European Community.
But when Tony Blair, who had once worked for him, finally succeeded in regaining No 10 for Labour, he became one of his most outspoken critics, accusing him of abandoning its socialist principles.
As a passionate advocate for the causes of redistribution and equality, particularly in the education system, he was dismayed by New Labour’s wholesale embrace of the market economy.
After standing down from the House of Commons in 1997, he was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Hattersley of Sparkbrook.
Alongside his political career, he was a prolific author, publishing more than 20 books including biographies, histories and memoirs.
His wife Maggie Pearlstine survives him.
