David Owen: A radical life

David Owen has spent the last 60 years at the heart of British politics. After becoming a Labour MP in 1966 and serving as foreign secretary under Jim Callaghan from 1977-1979 he became disillusioned with the direction of the increasingly Left-wing Labour Party. Owen co-founded the Social Democratic Party and went on to lead it twice. In the 1990s, he was an EU peace negotiator in the former Yugoslavia and co-authored the consequential Vance-Owen Peace Plan. He joins UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers to talk about his life in politics, the ideological shifts of the recent decades and the future of the British Left.