Hey Al, how have you been?
I had been, I think it's fair to say, quite ill for a while, but I'm a lot better now due to the magic of modern medicine.
Do you think any of the Labour leadership candidates in '76 could've done better than Callaghan and prevented a Thatcher victory, or was that always inevitable?
All we can say is that Callaghan was PM during an exceptionally difficult period and needed all his (considerable) abilities to keep the show on the road and the country safe from an actual economic crisis, and also that in order to do that he also needed Foot to run the Commons and Healey as Chancellor. Without an equivalent to that any alternative would not even reach 1979. Foot was irreplaceable as Leader of the House and, as everyone found out (under, admittedly, even worse circumstances for the Party) a few years later, was not really suited for the television era, as spectacular a Commons performer as he was. There would have been an alternative to Healey (Dell, his deputy in real life) but he was as undiplomatic as Healey and if factional issues made it impossible to pick Healey, they would also have ruled out Dell who was slightly to his right and strongly pro-EEC. Of all the contenders, Jenkins was thinking along lines closest to the median voter by 1976, but he was too divisive given the parliamentary situation. And Crosland (who, for all his faults, I have a lot of time for) was out of time both intellectually and, sadly, literally and would have died in this scenario as well.
A follow-up question to this, if I might - what's your opinion of Tony Benn? I suppose you failing to (or not bothering) mention him in this answer gives a pretty strong hint...
