On Friday, September 26th, as delegates were arriving in Liverpool for the Labour Party Conference, I was elsewhere in the city. Harold Wilson became the MP for Ormskirk in the Labour landslide of 1945. Various boundary changes turned the constituency into Huyton and here I am in Huyton Village with Harold’s statue. His features are perfectly sculpted but he would have objected to having his precious pipe removed.

Harold represented the constituency until he went to the Lords in 1983. That was after winning four general elections and a European referendum as one of Britain’s greatest Prime Ministers.

Huyton is now part of the Knowsley constituency and its fabulous MP, Annaliese Midgley, invited me to attend an event in the British Legion where I could meet many elderly constituents who remembered Harold. I am his latest biographer and I was interviewed by my friend (Lord) David Hanson,
Annaliese presided over an evening filled with warm recollections of a man whose immense intelligence never got in the way of his kindness and courtesy or his deep affection for Merseyside (despite being a pronounced Yorkshireman).