RIP Denis Healy

Former chancellor Lord Denis Healey was 'funny, bullish and ferociously bright'

The Daily Mirror's political editor pays tribute to the memory of the Labour giant, who died today age 98

Labour peer: Denis Healy leaving 11 Downing Street holding the budget box on Budget Day 1976
Denis Healey was from a golden generation of Labour politicians and was perhaps the greatest of them all.
Funny, bullish, ferociously bright, he achieved everything he sought in life except becoming Prime Minister.
His life is a history of the 20th century. It is the story a grammar school boy who went to Oxford and became a communist, a Second World War hero who was twice mentioned in dispatches at the Italian landings and a precocious politician who addressed the 1945 Labour conference as Major Healey.

It was also the story of the turbulence and division of post-war politics which saw him serve six years as Defence Secretary from 1964-70 and then, from 1974-79 as Chancellor at a time of economic turmoil.

And it is also the story of thwarted ambition and the personal and bruising fights against the Labour left.


BBC
Passed away: Labour peer Denis Healey
He took part in the debates on Suez, saw the Berlin Wall erected and dismantled, and argued passionately for Nato and Britain's nuclear defence.

His death marks the passing of an era. His peers were Harold Wilson, Roy Jenkins, Tony Benn, Barbara Castle, Jim Callaghan, Richard Crossman and Tony Crosland.

All had their talents but Healey stood out for his doggedness, humour and populism. He could swear with the best of them and at the best of them.

Always more popular with the public than his Labour colleagues, he was instantly recognisable for his deep laugh, booming voice and those trademark eyebrows.


Ron Burton/Daily Mirror
One of a kind: Denis Healey pictured here in his garden in Tunbridge Wells, Kent
What set him apart from today's politicians was his unashamed hinterland. He loved photography, food, music and poetry.
And unlike many of today's politicians he was fluent in the language of the electorate. When Mike Yarwood uttered the words "silly billy" he didn't need to explain which politician he was impersonating.

His put downs have become famous.
He likened an attack from Geoffrey Howe to being "savaged by a dead sheep."
His assessment of David Owen was brutal: ."When he was born all the good fairies gave him every virtue: 'You'll be beautiful, you'll be intelligent, you'll have charm and charisma.' And the bad fairy came along and tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'But you'll be a s**t.' That was his trouble."e was equally honest about his own political failings, telling the Guardian in 2007:
"I've always wanted to do something rather than be something.
"Doing the job of chancellor or defence secretary was important to me, whereas being prime minister wasn't. That was a great mistake."

Politics is a quieter, more pedestrian place today. The one solace is he finally reunited his wife of 60 years Edna.

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Many things I didn't agree with him about, but he was a giant of a man, with a huge intellect and the ability to stay human through it all.  RIP Denis.

All I remember are his big bushy eyebrows.

My eyebrows get like that, until Daughter gets out the scissors.