James Callaghan Michael Foot The 1980 Labour Party leadership election was held following the resignation of James Callaghan, who had been prime minister from 1976 to 1979 and had stayed on as leader of the Labour Party for eighteen months in order to oversee an orderly transition to his favoured successor, Denis Healey, over his own deputy Michael Foot.

In 1998 Ivor Crewe and Anthony King alleged that at least five (unnamed) Labour MPs who defected to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981 deliberately voted for Foot in order to give the Labour Party a man whom they regarded as an ostensibly unelectable left-wing leader (although none of the SDP's founding "Gang of Four" did so).

[4] Benn, meanwhile, spoke out against the contest, arguing the leadership should not be decided until new franchise rules which replaced the system of MPs electing the leader with an electoral college could be brought in in 1981.

[5] Political journalist William Russell reported that Foot's intervention meant the prospects of a Healey win on the first ballot went from being "fair" to being "dashed".

Edward Pearce would later write that while Shore had initially been seen as "a serious leadership contender, as candidate of the left against Healey", the nomination of Foot meant that his prospects "went to nothing".

One suggested explanation for this outcome was that Foot's popularity as an MP meant that even his opponents within the party felt that he had a better chance of uniting Labour than Healey.

That meant Healey, as the candidate of the right, lost support of those MPs who wanted "peace at any price" and the later founders of the SDP who, for "kamikaze reasons", desired Foot's election, which they hoped would provide the basis for the party to split.

Richards states that despite being on the left of the party Foot was not a "tribal politician" and had proved he could work with those of different ideologies and had been a loyal deputy to Callaghan.

[16] Richards also claims that Healey's election "would have been seen as an act of provocation by a significant section" of Labour's membership as the party had been moving leftwards.

[17] Foot's reaction to his victory included telling reporters that he was "as strong in my socialist convictions as I have ever been", suggesting that he would not abandon his position on Labour's left.