[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ramsay_macdonald.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:A fine moustache.]]

->''"He wishes to do the right thing... Today 23 years ago dear [[UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria Grandmama]] died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government!"''
-->--'''King George V'''

James Ramsay [=MacDonald=] (12 October 1866 – 9 November 1937) was a British politician and twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the first Labour Prime Minister in 1924.

[=MacDonald=] was among the founding members of the Labour Party, and first became its leader in 1911. His first spell as leader saw the party takes its first steps towards a solidly left-leaning party -- as opposed to its previously more nebulous pro-working-class stances -- but he resigned on the eve of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI after refusing to support the government in going to war. He remained an outcast in the party throughout the war, and lost his seat in the postwar election in 1918, but the party's left continued to regard him as its leader-in-exile while a series of mostly ineffectual and invisible leaders nonetheless presided over a gradual increase in its electoral fortunes.

Over time, [=MacDonald=] regained his standing and respect, and he returned to parliament in the 1922 general election, which saw Labour replace the Liberal Party as the chief opposition to the Conservative Party. He wasted no time in deposing party leader John Clynes, a generally well-liked and respected man, but one who just about everybody could tell would be hopelessly out of his league in the event of Labour forming the next government -- which happened much sooner than anybody had expected, when Prime Minister UsefulNotes/BonarLaw became terminally ill and had to step down within a year. His successor, UsefulNotes/StanleyBaldwin, decided that he needed his own mandate and called a general election, only to lose his majority, causing his government to fall after the Liberals refused to support a minority Conservative administration. As the leader of the next-largest party, it fell to [=MacDonald=] to form a government, which the Liberals begrudgingly agreed to back.

His first government was a minority government that lasted about 9 months. [=MacDonald=] took the post of Foreign Secretary as well as Prime Minister and made it clear that his main priority was to undo the damage which he believed had been caused by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In order to try and get an overall majority after the Liberals pulled their support, he called an election, and then one of the biggest scandals of the age hit: the Zinoviev letter. This falsified document apparently showed the leader of the Communist International in the USSR instructing British Communists to prepare for revolution, causing a backlash against the whole left and a belief that only the Conservatives could stand against Communism. Labour actually gained votes in the election, but many Liberal supporters switched to supporting the Conservatives, handing the latter victory. This had the side-effect of permanently eliminating the Liberals as an actual party of government, leaving Labour firmly established as the only viable opposition to the Conservatives.

Labour came back to power in 1929 but then got swept away by The Great Depression and [=MacDonald's=] insistence that the government did not use deficit spending to stimulate the economy. In 1931 he formed a "National Government" with the Conservatives and Liberals, but only a handful of Labour politicians followed him; the Labour Party kicked him out and labelled him a traitor. In the 1931 election, the National Government won the biggest landslide in British history and [=MacDonald=] was left in the peculiar situation of being a socialist politician steering a Conservative-dominated government. This also makes [=MacDonald=] technically the last Prime Minister from a party other than the Conservatives or Labour, as he spent the remainder of his life as part of the breakaway National Labour Party who, despite having a similar name, were unaffiliated with the main Labour Party.

His health deteriorated during the rest of his premiership and most of the actual power got handed to Baldwin, handing the Premiership over in 1935. [=MacDonald=] stayed in government until 1937 -- outside of a hiatus of about four months in-between his losing his seat in the 1935 general election, and winning another seat in a by-election the following January -- and died later that year.

!!Ramsay [=MacDonald=] in fiction:
* One ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' episode shows him arriving in Downing Street after his election victory, and promptly removing his clothes to reveal somewhat... specialised underwear.
* In the [[AudioPlay/BigFinishDoctorWho Big Finish Doctor Who]] story [[Recap/BigFinishDoctorWho016StormWarning Storm Warning]], set in 1930, a [[ClockRoaches Vortisaur]] is named Ramsay by Charley Pollard after the current PM, as she believes it resembles him.
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