Edward Heath

Heath's 1970 government lost its intended chancellor, Iain Macleod, within a month of taking office, a loss many historians think shaped everything that followed. Heath then relied on a small circle and officials rather than his cabinet, and the 1972 U-turn to industrial intervention and incomes policy was driven from Number 10. Cabinet members including Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher acquiesced, then built their careers on rejecting it. It is a premiership best read through who was missing.