Michael Foot, former Labour leader, dies aged 96

By Andrew Porter, Political Editor Published: 8:19PM GMT 03 March 2010

Link to this video

Baroness Thatcher, who faced Mr Foot in majority burning clashes opposite the despatch box in the House of Commons, pronounced she was "very contemptible to listen to the news" of his death.

In a matter expelled by her office, Lady Thatcher said: "He was a good parliamentarian and a man of high principles."

Michael Foot: necrology Tributes paid to Michael Foot Michael Foot: an fair man Michael Foot: noted quotes Michael Foot: a ardent well read man Tony Benn writes on the genocide of Michael Foot

Gordon Brown described Mr Foot as "a man of low element and ardent faith and one of the majority expressive speakers Britain has ever heard."

His genocide was voiced to the House of Commons by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, who told MPs the headlines would be perceived "with good dolour not usually in my own celebration but opposite the nation as a whole".

Mr Foot died prior to long prior to 7am on Wednesday sunrise at his home in Hampstead, sources said. He had been ill for a little time with vanishing health and had been reception 24-hour care.

He led the Labour celebration by one of the bitterest and majority catastrophic durations from 1980 until he was degraded comprehensively in the 1983 ubiquitous election.

Mr Foot was inaugurated to the Commons in 1945 carrying initial stood as a Labour claimant in 1935.

In 1980, he kick off a plea from Denis Healey to win the celebration leadership, but the celebration remained committed to a severe agenda.

The 1983 ubiquitous choosing manifesto, described by Gerald Kaufman as "the longest self-murder note in history", enclosed a joining to chief disarmament and a host of alternative policies that were a present to a prevalent Conservative celebration underneath Mrs Thatcher who had additionally only won the Falklands War.

Mr Foot concluded with the preference to send the charge force to the South Atlantic notwithstanding antithesis from a little of his own MPs.

Mr Foot was innate in Plymouth in 1913 and initial became MP for Plymouth Devonport in 1945, prior to apropos MP for Ebbw Vale and Blaenau Gwent.

He was Employment Secretary in the 1974-76 Labour supervision underneath Harold Wilson and went on to turn Leader of the Commons in between 1976 and the 1979 ubiquitous election.

Mr Foot was famously derided for wearing what was characterised as a dickey coupler at a Cenotaph observance ceremony, nonetheless he regularly insisted he had sported a intelligent car coat.

Although his coming was mostly mocked, his oratory inside and outward the Commons was famed.

He was succeeded as Labour personality by his expert and associate Welshman Neil Kinnock, who took on the tough left and sowed the seeds of New labour.

Mr Foot was tied together to Jill Craigie, the writer and feminist historian, who died in 1999. He remained an eager believer of Plymouth Argyle.