Denis Healey has been hailed as a “Labour giant” by his colleagues as they pay tribute to the former Chancellor, who has died aged 98.
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His family said the 98-year-old died peacefully in his sleep on Saturday morning at his home in Sussex after a short illness.
When Jim Callaghan resigned as Labour leader in 1980, he was a strong favourite to win the party’s leadership election, but was beaten by Michael Foot and became his deputy.
Paying tribute to Healey, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn described Healey as a “giant” of the party.
Chancellor George Osborne described him as a “giant of the Labour movement” who had been in office “in the most hard circumstances”.
After graduating at Balliol in Oxford, he served with the Royal Engineers during the Second World War, seeing action in North Africa and Italy.
Independent on Sunday editor Lisa Markwell said: “Newsroom reverberating with fond stories of Denis Healey”.
The retired Labour politician, often described as “the best prime minister the party never had”, served as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970 and Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979.
After unsuccessfully contesting the safe Tory seat of Pudsey and Otley the same year, Healey won a by-election in Leeds South East in 1952. All our thoughts are with his family on their loss.
Lord Healey was in when the government was forced to go to the global Monetary Fund for a loan as the United Kingdom economy teetered on the brink of collapse in 1976.
He called Healey “a hugely entertaining man” and an excellent author.
Lord Healey was renowned in Westminster for his quick wit and sense of mischief.
But he had a sharp mind and could fell opponents with a devastating one-liner, once likening debating with Conservative Chancellor Geoffrey Howe to being “savaged by a dead sheep” and accusing Margaret Thatcher of “glorying in slaughter” during the Falklands conflict. “Thoughts with all his friends and family”.
He was always at heart a moderate by the standards of his times, beating Corbyn’s hero Tony Benn to the deputy leadership in 1980.
Former Labour cabinet minister Peter Hain said Healey was “an enormous character”.
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Former Labour leader Lord Kinnock said: “Denis had high intellect, great personal courage, charm and a sense of humour which was rumbustious and, when needed, lethal”. All of us in the Labour Party owe him a huge debt.
