He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1973 to 2001, representing part of County Durham, and then as a life peer in the House of Lords from 2001 until shortly before his death in 2022.

[6] A europhile, Radice was one of only five Labour MPs to vote for the third reading of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, defying his party Whip, which was to abstain.

The party would not win, he argued, unless and until it managed to connect its ambitions for social justice with the individualistic aspirations of the voters in southern England.

In this pamphlet and in "Southern Discomfort: One Year On" (2011), Radice warned that the 'southern problem' is more than geographical: social change means that Labour support collapsed in other areas, including the Midlands.

This was followed by The Tortoise and the Hares, a comparative biography of Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin, Stafford Cripps, Hugh Dalton and Herbert Morrison.

In a review of Trio, Andrew Blick wrote that, "With his previous work Friends and Rivals (2002) and The Tortoise and the Hares (2008), Radice developed a distinctive approach to contemporary history, using group biography ....Radice adds to his historical approach not only a readable writing style, but the judgements of an experienced Labour politician.

"[17] Lord Radice had been a member of the advisory board of the Centre for British Studies of Berlin's Humboldt University since 1998.