Michael Foot (born July 23, 1912) is a British politician who leads the Labour Party in exile in Canada.
In-Game Biography[]
A fellow MP once said that Michael Foot was a man who belonged not to the parliament of the 60s, but to the days of Disraeli and Gladstone. To an uneducated man, this may seem ridiculous. How could Foot, the radical, heir to Attlee and Bevan, leader of the exiled Labour movement, possibly be a man of the Victorian era? Yet, behind that radical exterior, lies an intellectual, a man who can rattle off critics of Swift and Harper as easily as describe the plight of the working class.
Foot, unlike many of his contemporaries, was not born to the working class. Raised Liberal, Foot would only subscribe to socialism after bearing witness to the inequalities across Britain, most clearly in Liverpool, where he first committed himself to socialism. Throughout the 30s, Foot would dedicate himself to the Labour Party, most commonly through his journalism, through which He would write scathing criticisms of the appeasement policy followed by the Conservative government, concluding the book Guilty Men, a scathing critique of appeasement.
Foot, upon the outbreak of World War Two, would attempt to join the military, but was unable to fight owing to medical conditions. Despite this, He would continue to support the war effort, even despite the failure of the National Government, and would continue to note how Conservative governments had left Britain unprepared for war, and had collaborated with the very enemy they were facing. In another timeline, this rhetoric may have led to his death by the German occupiers, yet thanks to an intervention by Lord Beaverbrook, whom Foot had developed a close relationship to whilst working at the Evening Standard, Foot would be evacuated to Canada, forced to watch the occupation of his thousands of miles away.
Even in exile, Foot, ever the romantic, would not give up. He would continue in activism abroad, becoming one of the most influential exiled leaders. This continued dedication to Britain would eventually lead to his election to Labour leader, a role he would excel in. As Labour leader, he has marched with MLK, dined with Nehru, and has constantly fought no just for the liberation of his own home but for the freedom of the world as well.
Now, Foot has finally returned home. Winning the post-war election on a program of a new Jerusalem, Foot has a daunting task ahead of him. Thousands starve, millions lie in poverty and the British people cry out for aid, made weak by the decades of German occupation. The work will be hard, yet if Foot is successful, the red flag will fly in Britain forevermore.