The former Treasury minister Denzil Davies, who has died aged 80, was a brilliant but mercurial politician for whom the promise of a glittering Westminster career was thwarted by the unfortunate combination of Labour’s long years in opposition after 1979 and his somewhat volatile character.
He famously brought an end to his own political prospects by resigning the shadow defence portfolio in a 2am telephone call to the Press Association in 1988. His remaining 17 years in the House of Commons were spent largely in obscurity on the backbenches.
The son of a colliery blacksmith from Carmarthenshire, Davies left the valleys of south-west Wales for Pembroke College, Oxford, where his outstanding intellect was confirmed by a first-class honours degree in law. Elected as Labour MP for Llanelli in 1970, he was appointed to the Treasury by Harold Wilson in 1975, leapfrogging the junior ministerial ranks to enter the government directly as a minister of state. He was the youngest member of the privy council when he was sworn a member in 1978 and was identified as a possible future Labour leader by the then chancellor of the exchequer, Denis Healey.
Davies was a charming, popular and convivial man who throughout his 35 years in the Commons resisted aligning himself with the factions of either left or right in the Labour party and was driven, rather, by his own strongly held political convictions. He opposed devolution to Wales, campaigned relentlessly against Britain’s membership of what was then the European Economic Community and, while opposing nuclear weapons, rejected unilateral nuclear disarmament for the UK in favour of a conventional defence strategy within Nato.
He had been shadow defence secretary for five years when his frustration erupted after a long summer’s evening on the Commons terrace and he resigned by telephoning the PA’s political editor, Chris Moncrieff.
He blamed Neil Kinnock’s repeated failure to consult him before announcing changes in defence policy but, in reality, in any case had a difficult relationship with the then party leader. He had tried to resist Kinnock reappointing him to defence after the general election in 1987 – having unsuccessfully sought instead to become foreign affairs spokesman – and was irritated by Kinnock’s style of leadership.
It was because of this that he chose to resign in the middle of the night, a plan of action he plotted in advance and discussed with his close friend and Welsh parliamentary colleague Ted Rowlands.
Davies believed that if he chose a more…
