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We round it up every Prime Minister with Andrew Jimson and in 2022, Nigel Fletcher from the

Centre for Opposition Studies has been telling us about every leader of the opposition

who crucially never made it to number 10, from Charles James Foxx all the way through to

Keir Starmer, so let's get on with it then, hit the montage.

First up on this episode, Patrick McGuire spoke to Nigel about Margaret Beckett.

I think the first thing to say is that it's often said and we've heard this discussion in recent

months about the Labour Party not ever having had a woman leader, well actually that's not really correct

because both Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman have served as leader of the Labour Party.

And when Margaret Beckett became leader in May 1994, the Labour Party's constitution says

that when there is a vacancy for leader, when the leader has either died or resigned,

the deputy becomes leader of the Labour Party.

Not until leader or instrument leader.

The leader, exactly.

One of the interesting things, I mean Matt did an interview with Margaret Beckett earlier this year,

which I think you can hear on the red box podcast.

And she says then that she had the option of doing two things at that point as well.

She could have remained as leader until the party conference in the autumn when there would have been

the annual election of the leader.

And she could then have remained as leader of the party until then.

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