Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden waited fifteen years to succeed Churchill and destroyed himself in twenty months. He had the best possible record for the job. He resigned as foreign secretary in 1938 over Chamberlain's dealings with Mussolini, which made him one of the few senior Conservatives untouched by appeasement, and he held the Foreign Office again through the war and the 1950s with a reputation as the most accomplished negotiator in Europe. He became prime minister in April 1955 and won an election immediately. In July 1956 Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company. Eden regarded him as a Mussolini who had to be stopped early, said so privately in exactly those terms, and the analogy did the thinking. What followed was a secret agreement at Sèvres with France and Israel: Israel would invade Sinai, Britain and France would then intervene as peacekeepers to separate the combatants and occupy the canal. The pretext was arranged in advance and Eden denied its existence in the Commons. The operation succeeded militarily and collapsed politically within a week. Eisenhower, not consulted and furious, refused support for sterling at the IMF while a run was under way, and Britain accepted a ceasefire without having taken the canal. The denial is what finished him at home. Ministers had told the Commons there was no foreknowledge of the Israeli attack, the Sevres protocol said otherwise, and the British copy was destroyed - so the charge against him is not the war but lying to parliament about how it began. It is the clearest demonstration available that Britain could no longer act against American wishes, and it was watched carefully in every colony. He resigned in January 1957, in genuinely poor health after a botched gallbladder operation years earlier, and lived another twenty years mostly defending the decision.
- Lived: 1897 CE – 1977 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
