Editing Harold Wilson (section)

===Reputation===
Despite his successes, Wilson's reputation took a long time to recover from the low ebb reached after his second premiership. The reinvention of the Labour Party would take the better part of two decades at the hands of [[Neil Kinnock]], [[John Smith (Labour Party leader)|John Smith]] and, electorally and most conclusively, [[Tony Blair]]. Disillusion with Britain's weak economic performance and troubled industrial relations, combined with campaigning by figures such as Sir [[Keith Joseph]], had helped to make a radical market programme politically feasible for [[Margaret Thatcher]] (which was, in turn, to influence the subsequent Labour leadership, especially under Blair). An opinion poll in September 2011 found that Wilson came in third place when respondents were asked to name the best post-war Labour Party leader. He was beaten only by John Smith and Tony Blair.<ref>[http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/4099 More from YouGov/Sunday Times] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190117141201/http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/4099 |date=17 January 2019 }}, UKPollingReport blog. [http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/yg-archives-pol-st-results-3009-011011.pdf Full polling results] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111006095443/http://today.yougov.co.uk/sites/today.yougov.co.uk/files/yg-archives-pol-st-results-3009-011011.pdf |date=6 October 2011 }}</ref>

According to Glen O'Hara in 2006:<ref>Glen O'Hara "'Dynamic, Exciting, Thrilling Change': the Wilson Government's Economic Policies, 1964–70," ''Contemporary British History'' (2006), 20:3, 383–402, DOI: 10.1080/13619460500407087</ref>

<blockquote>Much of the disillusionment with Harold Wilson as Labour's leader and prime minister was due to his perceived failure on the economic front. He pledged not to devalue sterling, but did exactly that in 1967; he promised to keep unemployment low, but had by 1970 accepted a higher rate of joblessness than the Conservatives had managed. Some of the elements in Labour's programme – the emphasis on steadier growth, for instance – were probably misguided. These problems and defeats have, however, obscured some of the real achievements of the period. Science and education spending grew very quickly; industrial investment rose; government was increasingly well informed and better advised about the performance of the economy. In an increasingly unstable and rapidly changing economic environment, this government's economic record is here shown to be, if not hugely impressive, then at least relatively creditable.</blockquote>