No new party leader in living memory had faced such a challenge. Worst of all, Steel’s predecessor, the colourful and narcissistic Jeremy Thorpe, had just been accused of an affair with the male model Norman Scott, and would shortly be charged with conspiracy to have Scott murdered. Out of power since the Thirties, the Liberals seemed an eccentric irrelevance. Although he had been in the Commons for 11 years, many of his parliamentary colleagues still knew him as ‘the boy David’. When he took the reins of the Liberal Party in 1976, he was just 38.
In fact, as David Torrance’s thorough but rather grey-suited biography shows, there was more to Steel than met the eye. Duelling duet: Steel, right, with David OwenĪnd its leader? ‘One word from your name, and one word from mine.’ The names, needless to say, are ‘David’ and ‘Owen’.
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