How doess the health of the Prime Minister affect the course of British political history?

Sometimes, the PM steps down due to ill health or perceived ill health, allowing another leader to come in, and this brings about a change of policy direction, and thus history. Modern British history has many such scenarios and 'what ifs?'

In 1953, Winston Churchill suffered his stroke, which may have hastened his departure from number 10, and the ascendency of Anthony Eden to the premiership. Had this not happened, Churchill would have been PM during the Suez crisis, and may well have obtained a different result. As things happened, Eden was, it was the biggest foreign policy mistake of any British government, and affected his health rather badly. A factor in him resigning in January 1957 to give the reins to Harold MacMillan.

'Supermac' ruled the country with a fair degree of competence until 1963 when he himself stepped down due to a mistaken belief that he had prostrate cancer. Alec Doglas Home took over, but proved to be nothing more than a coda in the wake of the rising Harold Wilson. Had Macmillan stayed on in number 10 and taken on Wilson at the 1964 election, the result may well have been very different. No Wilson, no Jenkis as Home Secretary, and no liberalisation of Britain during the Sixties.

However, that was what happened. Wilson took over and implemented all of those policies, but he himself was only in place because of the ill health of a leader, Hugh Gaitskell who had died himself in 1963. Had he survived and then taken on Macmillan in 1964, the history could have been very different.

Wilson carried on until losing the 1970 election, but returned in 1974 to govern a very different Britain to the one he had left. It was becoming the 'sick man of Europe' with 25% inflation and rising unemployment. Very different to his Sixties country. Wilson himself was becoming a sick man due to the onset of Alzheimers, which hastened his resignation from office in 1976, allowing Jim Callaghan to take over the reins. Callaghan was unable to hault the decline of the UK and presided over a loan from the IMF in 1976 and the Winter of Discontent in 1979, situations which played into Margaret Thatcher's hands as she won power in 1979. Her government was to prove immensely nation-changing, but it may never have happened had Wilson not stepped down. He would probably have taken her on in 1979 and may well have won. Then Thatcherism would never have happened, and nor would all of the changes she brought about to the country.

Fast forward to the Nineties with the John Major government negotiating in Europe and plotting our course out of recession. Across the despatch box was John Smith who was regarded as a 'lost king' of the Labour Party due to his solid intelligence and parliamentary ability. By 1997, the Conservatives had ruled for four straight terms and this was seen by many in the commentariat as stretching the democractic thread a little too far, so it is pretty safe to say that had Smith contested the 1997 election as Labour, he would have won and our political history would have been pro-European Social-Democracy.

This though was very different to what actually happened because Smith died of a heart attack in 1994, paving the way for the Blair-Brown axis to rule Britain during the Noughties. Blair ruled for 10 years from 1997 but stepped down in 2007, and health troubles (an irregular heartbeat and chronic back pain) are thought to have been the course of this. It now looks as if Gordon Brown will lose the 2010 election when it does happen (though this is not a foregone conclusion at all) and if that happens, historians will wonder if things would have unfolded differently, had Blair still been Prime Minister.

It's not about personalities - its about policies, as they say.

John Major famously had a problem with his wisdom teeth which kept him out of the diplomatic limelight during the fall of Thatcher. So it can often be very convenient.

Gordon Brown is hailed as the world's first disabled Prime Minister (I didn't know he had a glass eye until it came out in the conversation etc). I doubt if that will be the reason he is consigned to the dustbin of history at the next election.

7 have died in office - and would have had a destablising effect on the government of the time - but his duties would have been covered by a deputy. Spencer Perceval was murdered in the lobby of the House of Commons which was slightly unusual (thus breaking a centuries old tradition of not dying in Royal palaces).

Anyone can change the course of history.