Lese-majeste? Ex-PMs outlive monarchs

With the UK now blessed with eight living ex-prime ministers, there could be some (very) sharp elbowing manoeuvres at next month’s annual wreath-laying ceremony at The Cenotaph. By convention, each is expected to attend the event in Whitehall on the Sunday nearest Armistice Day, 11 November – but the ranks have swelled in recent years.

The Year of the Three Prime Ministers, 2022, is one factor in our sudden glut of deposed leaders.

However, Les Mayhew, Professor of Statistics at Bayes Business School, City St George’s University of London, had already flagged this particular looming demographic timebomb. In 2020 he trawled through the records to assess the longevity of monarchs and their immediate family, the PMs they appoint, and the archbishops who baptise, marry, and bury them.

Professor Mayhew compared their average age at death with that for the rest of the population born in the same year.

More time to rage against the dying of the limelight

While colleagues or voters may cut short their careers, ex-prime ministers topped Professor Mayhew’s ultimate ‘Poll of Polls’, outlasting both royal and spiritual leaders. More than 75 per cent of people given the keys to 10 Downing Street since 1841 enjoyed a lifespan that placed them in the top quarter of the population for longevity.

Around 70 per cent of prelates serving as archbishop of either Canterbury or York outlasted at least three-quarters of their flock.

Meanwhile, Shakespeare was clearly on to something when he wrote: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

Just 40 per cent of the females and a quarter of the males who are seen as ‘senior royals’ – British monarchs and their nearest and dearest – matched the longevity enjoyed by at least 75 per cent of their subjects.

The long lives of the late Queen Elizabeth II (who reached 96), and her husband, Prince Philip, (who died aged 99), rather broke with royal tradition. True, the late queen’s great grandmother, Victoria, was 81 when her 64 year reign ended in 1901. However, three of her nine children died before her; a fourth outlived her by just a few months.

L'Etat c'est ne moi pas, apres tout!

Professor Mayhew says: “Earlier generations of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Windsor dynasty wilfully neglected their health. It is likely that many succumbed to diseases related to obesity and excessive alcohol consumption. That was often compounded by smoking – the enormous health risks of which were not widely known until after the Second World War.”

Victoria’s oldest son, King Edward VII, was a prime example of the risks of pampered over-indulgence, dying aged 68 after a life of debauchery.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth II’s father (George VI) and grandfather (George V) were both heavy smokers. The former died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 1936 after more than a decade of poor health; a coronary thrombosis struck down the latter aged 56 – while he was suffering from lung cancer.

Professor Mayhew shared his technical paper with The Sunday Times in 2020 – who shared it with the grand figure of Robert Lacey, the author of Majesty and adviser to the makers of Netflix behemoth The Crown. Mr Lacey suggested that today’s royals, unlike their pre-Elizabethan forebears, could reap the biological dividend of prioritising service over decadence.

He said: “The outer trappings of majesty may appear largely the same today but the inner content – the ethos – has inverted from self-indulgence to service in the course of the last century, and, with it, a different exemplar of self-care and lifestyle.”

Many of Elizabeth II’s early prime ministers – particularly the wealthier and grander ones – had chronic health conditions while in office; others had been raised in poverty – usually a good predictor of poor health.

Yet, like most of their pre-war predecessors, they lived on to a great age.

Her first, Winston Churchill, reached 90, dying some 15 years after the first of several strokes.  Harold Macmillan, who was injured at the Battle of the Somme, lived to 92, and Anthony Eden struggled on to 79 – despite botched surgery and an addiction to stimulants. Fellow Conservatives Ted Heath (89) and Margaret Thatcher (87) also had long retirements, perhaps giving a new perspective to the latter's claim shortly before being deposed that she intended to "go on and on".

However, the poll is topped by a Labour premier, James Callaghan, who died on the eve of his 93^rd birthday, having been born into poverty.

Meanwhile, unlikely though it may sometimes seem to some, Professor Mayhew suspects an element of Social Darwinism might explain the prime ministerial longevity.

“It could be that the MPs who stay in Parliament long enough to be prime minister are actually very good at the job of being a politician and therefore very good at dealing with the pressures of Downing Street. Potential rivals will have lost their seats while others will have fallen by the wayside due to ill-health – so it's almost an example of the survival of the fittest.”

In which case, they’re going to need extra wreathes at the Cenotaph for decades to come.

• Join us for a fun evening of  demographic  data-crunching with The FT's John Burn-Murdoch and FASI  academics and alumni  on 27 November to mark the faculty's golden jubilee.