TRAITOR! You’d be a peculiar Labour leader if nobody ever called you that. In that particular, small “t” sense, perhaps it’s most associated with this week’s Icon, a man who slithered too close to the Tories and who, though no roué, had a definite eye for the ladies. By which I mean capital “L” Ladies.

Ramsay MacDonald was not only a peculiar Labour leader but the party’s first Prime Minister. He led his country, or at least Britain, for a total of nearly seven years, and exemplifies the twin truth that pragmatism undoes ideology, and reality pooh-poohs idealism.

Like the Clerk Maxwell and Maxwell Clerk imbroglio of a recent Icon, Ramsay MacDonald started life by getting his name backward, being born James McDonald Ramsay on 12 October 1866 at Lossiemouth, Moray, the illegitimate offspring of a farm labourer and a “domestic servant”, as the birth certificate has it.

Nobody wets their pants about such matter nowadays and, indeed, nor did they in north-east Scotland at that time, when nearly every sixth person was born out of wedlock. Ramsay left school at 15, worked on a farm, then became a pupil teacher at Drainie parish school.

At 18, he moved to Bristol to become assistant to a clergyman who was setting up a Boys' and Young Men's Guild. Here, he started taking an interest in politics – oh dear – and joined nascent Marxist group, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF).

In 1886, he moved to London – oh double-dear – and, in between odd jobs, joined the oddball Socialist Union which, unlike the SDF, sought progress through Parliament. So it begins.

That said, he still got right annoyed at things, such as Bloody Sunday of 1887, when working class traitors in the police and army attacked an unemployment (and Irish home rule) demonstration. Subsequently, he wrote a pamphlet decrying “Tory Terrorism”.

In London, he tried fomenting interest in Scottish home rule, but found little support among the city’s treacherous Scots. He wrote: “The Anglification of Scotland has been proceeding apace to the damage of its education, its music, its literature, its genius, and the generation that is growing up under this influence is uprooted from its past." Today, he’d be cancelled by the treacherous SNP for such sentiments.

After a period as private secretary to a Liberal politician, he became a freelance journalist, back in the days when there was money in it, but was now so corrupt in his morals that he fancied himself an elected politician and, after being trounced as an Independent Labour Party candidate in 1895, and another two times in 1900, finally got into Parliament on a Labour ticket in 1906. The Lord (Lib Dem) loves a trier.

By 1911, he was leading the party, touting it as left-wing successor to the Liberals, while developing a personal antipathy to class warfare and agitation.

The Parliamentary Labour Party at this time was anti-war … until war broke out. MacDonald stayed a pacifist, arguing that Britland “ought to have remained neutral” and, eventually, resigned as party chairman. Outwith the party, his anti-war views saw him accused of (all together now) … treachery. Hoorah!

Liberals smeared his illegitimacy and backward name, even saying the latter should have made his entry to Parliament void. Crazy stuff. In 1916, Moray Golf Club cancelled his membership as, by not being a slavering nutter, he "had endangered the character … of the club”.

In 1918, he lost his Leicester West seat and so had to stand – for Woolwich East in 1921. He lost but, the following year, was returned in Welsh mining seat Aberavon, and soon became Opposition leader.

Ideologically, despite his pacifism, he had moved right to believe in … nothing at all, except power and management (later known as Blairism). In 1923, the Conservative Government collapsed, and George V called on MacDonald to form a minority Labour government. So, in 1924, he became first Labour Prime Minister and, accordingly, set about suppressing strikes, with an early action being to send in troops against railway workers. A railway strike: did you ever hear the like?

Crushing the working class led to greater support among the working class and, in 1929, after another period of Tory rule (engendered by “red scares” and the forged Zinoviev letter), Labour formed a second government with 287 MPs.

Bad time to come to power: the Great Depression was soon getting everyone down. The state borrowed massively to finance unemployment benefit. The Bank of England opposed tax rises. Oswald Mosley resigned from Labour and set up a fascist party based on shirts.

The Cabinet was split by a recommendation to cut unemployment benefit, so MacDonald resigned and, encouraged by his pal King George V, formed a National Government with the Conservatives and Liberals: “the Great Betrayal” of 1931. Rioters took to the streets of Glasgow – natch – and Manchester. MacDonald was expelled from his beloved Labour Party. One trade union unstitched his eyes from its banner.

The National Government won the 1931 general election overwhelmingly, routing Labour. But the resulting animosity from old friends badly affected Ramsay. In 1935, with his health suffering, he stood down. When his friend George V died, his deep sense of loss hastened his own slide into the grave.

He was advised to take a cross-Atlantic voyage for his health and, accordingly, died during this on on 9 November 1937, aged 71.

Some idiot salaciously mentioned Ladies earlier and, whoever else he betrayed, his wife was not among them. Mother to his six children, he was devastated by her death in 1911 from blood poisoning. Subsequently, he had a 15-year affair with Lady Margaret Sackville and was frequently entertained – platonically, you curs! – by society hostess Lady Londonderry (wife of a Tory minister).

He was not so lucky with Lucy, Lady Houston, proprietor of the Saturday Review and a leading nutter. She believed MacDonald was in thrall to the Soviets, and hung derogatory messages in electric lights from her luxury yacht’s rigging. She also revived the old forgery ruse, with three fake letters supposedly written by MacDonald to Soviet officials.

So, betrayer of the left Ramsay MacDonald may have been. But at least he annoyed some of the right people.