Reflecting on Thatcher's Leadership Legacy

In twenty sixteen, a twenty two year old known as Posh George was jailed in the US for wire fraud standing by his side when he was arrested was Nigel Farraage. Join me, Gabriel Pogan from The Sunday Times For a wild ride through the worlds of politics, crypto, and crime It's in our new podcast series, Post George, the crriminal behind Farraage Search for Post George the Times wherever you get your podcasts Elections are a struggle for power. It is the most extreme that's ever been put before an electorate. Why did you give the orders to s? Britain cannot afford to continue with the present policies Welcome, welcome, Wlcome one and all. Welcome to how to win an election. I'm Hugo Rifind, joined as always by Sally Morgan, Polly Mackenzie, and Danny Finkelstein And this is the latest in our series looking at how some of the biggest elections in British political history were won and how they were lost So the year is nineteen eighty three, the Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher basking in victory in the Falklands. The Labour Party under Michael Foot has swung to the left and an alliance between the newly formed SDP and the Liberal Party threatens to break apart the old two party system Thatcher goes to the polles, wins a landslide. and cements her dominance over the party and the country and here to help us understand that this campaign is Lord Heseltne. forormer cabinet minister, former de Dputy P prime Minister, Giant of the Tory Party, Gord Heseltine, welcome Thank you. Pleas to be with you all Wonderful to have you here. that you've been you've been an environment secretary. You have been environment seecreary stering through and you've been steering through the right to buy campaign. And then in January of nineteen eighty three Margareth Thcher promoted you to defefense Scretary Is it a simplification to say that the wall had completely transformed Thatcher's standing in the run up to this election? played a very significant part But I think it was only a p I think that the right to buy a council hous had proved anmensely popular policy. And I think that Jeffrey How's management of the economy had begun to show the sort of results he'd been working for. but you can't escape and shouldn't try from the extraordinary achievements of the Falklands. Ieed. Well, look, before we go on, let's try and work out what the rest of us were all up to in nineteen eighty three Polly, we're going to skip you and me because we were small children. although I bet you were already deeply into policy at the age of whatever you were at the time, about one and a half Danny, for listeners who don't know, you began your political career with the SDP. How involved were you at this point? I was quite involved, but actually on the day that the nineteen eighty three election campaign was called, I was a student at the London School of Economics. I'm coming up to my finals And on the day that it was called, we had a speaker in the old theatre of the London School of Economics, which was Michael Haseltine. I was in the audience. I remember very clearly afterwards, Michael, that you went out and were interviewed about the election that had just been called When you were taking questions, you were sort of barracked by CND. but I being smarty pants asked you the question, how heavy was the mace Owing back to the famous occasion when you offered the Maace to Labour Party because they broke the pairing arrangements in the seventy four to ' seventy nine Parliament, to which you replied twice as heavy as the arguments of CND which I thought was a bal witty argument. But it it does mean that I think your move to defence as well as giving you the platform for after the election. It was designed to allow you to go at one of Labour's Big weaknesses. Margaret Thatch was moving one of her betteret television players into one of the areas where labor was weakest. Is that a fair assessment I think it's a fair thing for you to say but I have no of evidence to suppose that it's right or wrong I know that when she made me to Fence seecretary she told me that I would remain in that position after the election. But she never told me why I was being moved to defense secretary. There are other explanations, first of all She felt that the ministry was not being managed as tightly as its huge budget merited And she had, I think, been quite impressed by my control of the Department of the Environment and Public Ependiture. But again, the question you were putting is for her but not for me. Sally, you at this point, you were a teacher, but you were already heavily involved in labour politics. Were you a fan of Michael Foot at day I mean I was a local Labour partarty member. I was a geography teacher in a London secondary school and I was at that point looking back, I was vice chair of the British Youth Council, which was a strange organization, but many, many people that we all know actually came through the British Youth Council, all sorts of people And I was the Labour Party person and the Bres Council And you know, my involvement in the party, I suppose I remember it most clearly, I suppose from the crucial deputy leadership fight in the Labour Party in nineteen eighty one when I voted for Dennis Eeeley But of course, interestingly then, he lost very, very heavily in the party membership part of the vote. It was the unions that got Hay through which is somewhat different than you'd find in later years in the Lay Party, more more recent leadership elections in the Lab Party. So Um, I was not of I was I didn't dislike him. I didn't know him. I didn't know national people, National figures at that point. I didn't dislike him. I don't think people could, but he was so evidently ill suited to be leading a major political party and particularly one that was trying to pitch for broad appeal Michael's being very modest. I mean, my view of Michael's appointment was it was very clever because apart from being a really, obviously a very good communicator Michael somebody who had reach,, you know, he had more reach than some people in in the Conservative partarty at that point. And when Labour's one of Labour's fundamental weakness was was disarmament, to have somebody who could communicate really compellingly. wider than the hardcore, if you like, of the Tory partody was was a very good appointment, I thought. very clever Polly, had you been a little bit older, say, eleven or so? Do you think you would have been the liberal in nineteen eighty three? Probably not. No. I mean my mum and dad were both working in the NHS at the time. I think kind of Yeah, SDP all the way, I'd say. My stepfather was a member of the SDP at that time. He hadn't met or married my mother, but you know, playing with time. Let's start with Monday the ninth of May. Margaret Thatcher visits the palace She fires the starting gun. Michael, she didn't have to go to the polls for another year Was it an obvious decision to go for it at this point She obviously had close advisors of which I was not one Wh decided this was the appropriate moment to choose And there is no doubt that The left of the Labour Party, the CND element was a wonderful to the chorge in that election Um, I mean, it' well immodus of me to say so, but we did actually up We won the argument and they helped us hugely I went to Dubin to debate the issue you know, nuclear deterrence And the students line the route All very attractive young girls, all handing a candle And I realized that if CND had being able to present that image. It would have been very difficult for me the the leado CND had of course written me a letter saying We are very proud that you've been made Defense Secretary We now want you to debate with us And again, the leader was a very presentable lady And it's extremely difficult for a man defend in front of a girl dangers of U nuclear consequences. But of course the whole thing collapsed when I went to Greenham Common And I had this letter from the leader of CND. saying I challenge you through a debate And I really didn't know quite how to handle it because to say, look, I'm not going to debate with you would be a bit cherlish and you know. Anyway, well I got to C to Greenham Common. I was mulk by the Greenham ladies and indeed brought to my knees, I had a lot of police there But it was quite obvious that this was an unruly mor gave me the unprecedented opportunity to produce my reply declining the invitation to debate and say I debate in the houses of Parliament, not with mobs on the street together one ing during the day by Ministry of Defense Security Guards As Defense Secretary of the time, Michael, did CND look, obbviously they were Labour's closeness to CND was obviously an electoral advantage. But as Defense Secretary, did they worry you? Did you think you had s something of a moral mission to fight them as well Oh, I mean, I was totally aware that they were a left wing All their members, their senior members were members of the Labour Party or associated with the Labour Party But if you're quite right, asking me the question, did it worry? It worried me a great deal the sort of reasons I've mentioned that you Nuclear consequences are very frightening to people and you got to understand that And I was very worried about what they would do over Easter. Read and Cen And I remember vividly Waking up. U At six o'clock one morning and saying I know what I'm going to do. and only Easter The Thursday of Easter I was seen in Berlin inspecting the British troops guarding the wall When I got back on Good Friday, the pressures were all there What are you going to do about the ladies of Breenham Common who are ringing the base and everything I said we live in a free society But I've been talking to the men and women who every day risk their lives so that these ladies are free process And I've always believed that that was a game set and match to me. Let's move to Monday the sixteenth of May, when Labour launches its manifesto, the new Hope for Britain, which is almost immediately dubbed the longest suuicide notote in history I've just been looking at the Labour Party policy It is the most extreme. it's ever been put before an electorate It would change the whole basis of our society. Britain cannot afford to continue with the present policies. We cannot afford to continue with policies of mass unemployment. Sally, you had in there, what? withithrawal from the common market, the abolition of the House of Lords, newew wealth taxes, the cancellation of the Trident nuclear P programe removal of cruise missiles from Britain, Was it obvious from the start, even to people like you that it was going to be toxic with the electroate? Completely. I mean, you know I think I didn't talk to anybody who thought it was anything but an absolute disaster. And I think what's quite interesting think when I look back is the number of people who were campaigning at the time and newew on the doorstep It was And it's interesting, I think that both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown stood in that election and therefore personally experienced what it was like on the doorsteps Um And I think that stayed with them. you know, it may have taken a long time to get longer than perhaps they would have wished to get to the place that they wanted to get to. But I'm absolutely clear that ninet the ' eighty three was burned very, very clearly into them It was also just incredibly boring. I mean, it was You know, it was just, it was a manifesto that was devoid both of stories or hope or it was just it was just grindingly terrible, ludicrously detailed and any any of the sort of top line policies were wrong, so it was pretty disastrous I think Michael turned up at the center top in a donkey jack I mean, you know, there were ways to alienate huge numbers of people, but there were a few better and to turn up at the G Memorial Day. where countless British families lost Th and rel chance in looking as scruffy as that. And that, I think just consolidated the view about the Labor Party at the time It's interesting, Michael as well because I think lots of I think lots of labour MPs in the following years from if you like ordinary backgrounds, working class backgrounds, took their dress very, very serious and always have. I remember I mean, I remember talking to John McDonneald, for instance who is not you know, you know, you know, he's an archetypal sort of left wing MP, but But I can remember talking to him which general election it was, but always he expected to, you know, he expected to be dressed as his mother would have expected him to be dressed if you were a member of Parliament. and I think that was a that was a that was a broad view. But I wonder whether it does also come from seeing you know, Michael and the way he was inappropriately dressed that day because it did stay with people, didn't it? Let's move on to the SDP who launched their manifesto on Thursday the nineteenth. The Cervatives launch those a couple of days earlier. It's the SDP Liberal Alliance mananifesto, launch It was a few years since the gang of Fall Roy Jenkin, Chirlly Williams,ill Roggers, David Owen had left the Labour Party. Jenkins then entered into a pact with the Liberals Fing the Alliance, Danny by nineteen eighty three Did people still think that the SDP were something really radical that was going to break the mold I think that A sort of ' eighty two, the SDP had peaked. So in fact, Roy Jenkins while he was fighting the Glasgow Hillhead by election in the run up to the ' eighty three election. So this is in ' eighty two, he fought to get back into parliament and During the campaign it became really quite hard going. He'd begun thinking that he would be bound to win. and then during the campaign it got quite hard going and he did win in the end, but it was quite dicey. So that was an indication that these sort of air had gone out of the tyre to some extent. But actually the story of that election, if you look at the figures, is that the Conservative partarty went down a point Um and the u The Labour Party collapsed decisively And the SDP liberal the Liberal partarty therefore, got a lot more votes in that election. So although it was the case that it had peaked, it could no longer win an election and And I think that's because it never could quite decide whether it wanted to be one of three things, I A new Liberal party a new Labour party or actually a new political force. and it couldn't get the demographic big enough because it couldn't choose which of those things it wanted to be. So actually I think people could see that it that it was, in fact, Margaret Thatcher in that election, who was stillill the time for a change candidate. She really ran that election on thatat. was By nineteen ninety seven, it was more Britainons on the right track. Don't turn back. on ' eighty three in eighty three, it was still We've still got to change this country, hasn't changed enough. And the STP did not look partarticularly under Roy Jenkins's leadership, u for all that, you know, there are many admirable he had many admirable qualities as the sort of party that did that. but Michael will have more will have had more interaction with Roy Jenkins and seeing him more in the Cons. and I wonder what what you made of him Michael as a political character I had no relationship with him at all So you know, I wasn't in the House of Commons very much. I in my department doing the job I was paid to do. And so my relationship with the House of Commons well, you will know, I thought was being crit one of the criticisms of me is that I never created any sort of base in hs the commons That is perfectly true. I pre. abutely fascinated by the jobs and the responsibilities that The tea time sort of catting the lads and lastess is just part of my life. Polly, other obvious lessons of nineteen eighty three for now that we've thought the two party system was dead before and it hasn't been I think that's absolutely the case. I know Donn is right about Roy Jenkins and wasn't there was a sense of being past the peak but also There's just a brutal first past the post electoral system, In the end, the Alliance won twenty five percent of the vote. I mean. Almost all of the parties are about twenty five percent of the vote or would dream of being on twenty five percent of the vote right now twow percent behind Aor and then they won a tenth of the seats because of the kind of the geographical distribution of labours all squished up and the alliance spread out And obviously that makes a strong case in some minds for proportional representation. But it is just a reminder of how hard it is to break through and The situation is different now because we have five or seven party politics which means that you might get to the tipping point from know getting ten percent of the vote in an unfair system to getting Sorry ten percent of the seats in an unfair system at twenty five. getting, you know three hundred percent of the vote of the seats because first pass the post just sort of Hool volults you over on a much smaller share of the boat. You know, we talk about Nigel Farage and reform with this kind of surge of popular enthusiasm But again, like not really, Cervatives have polled forty, forty five percent in the past and he's nowhere near that probably by the time you worked for the Lib Dems, was this history something people still thought about a lot, tried to learn lessons from, were haunted by to some extent Yeah I mean, there was yeah, so the theory became of, you know getting into a local area And that's what Ed Davy did in the last general election so comprehensively, right is that he really just consolidated all of the effort in the seats that they were going to win, which meant that actually for the first time, they got ten percent of the vote and ten percent of the seats in House of Commons, a perfect kind of proportional outcome. by elections were the kind of SDP triumph that the LibDems then took on But in order to convert that into general elections, you've just to Gind, grind, grind in a seat, grounded in, I guess community politics. just being a bit being a bit different Michael, what was your perception of the alliance during this election? Did they occupy much of your thought? D Were you just grateful that they were taking votes off labour? Did you respect them at all as a political force Now The Labour Party has always been a coalition of the working class and the socialist movement And these were people who, in my view were very determined to represent the working class elements of the Labour Party, a much more practical, less doctrinal view Um, u and so If I had been of the left, I would have been one of them they seemed this saner element of the vetering politics But equally, you could argue the liems or the liberals that they are. we' in the same sort of category. I But it would be wrong to try and give the impression that I spent a lot of time worrying about them, you know CN D in the election campaign. Well we'll be back in just a moment a little bit more. We're going to hear about Thatcher's cllash with a teacher, not Sally on live television when we come back with a bit more how to win every morning throughout the World Cup, the game, football podcast from the Times and Sunday Times will bring you your essential daily briefing. We'll hear from our reporters inside the England and Scotland camps bringing you the big news first. We've got reporters covering the best of the rest and following all the biggest stories. From FIFA banning water to Donald Trump coming on as a sub against Paraguay. Okay, maybe not the last bit, but who knows? So join the game for the biggest show on Eth. Find the game wherever you get your podcasts Welome to an election we are joined Lord Heseltyine and we're talking about the conservative campaign in the nineteen eighty three election. Let's turn now to Tuesday, the twenty fourth of May and this live appearance by Margaret Thatcher on the BBCs nationwide Mrs Diana Gould in our Bristol studio, missses Gould, your question, please. All Mrs. Thatcher Why when the Belgrrano, the Argentinian battleship outside the exclusion zone and actually sailing away from the Falklands Why did you give the orders to sink it It was not sailing away from the Falklands. It was in an area which was a danger to our ships and to our people on them. Outside the exclusion zone. But it was in an area which we had warned At the end of April, we had given warnings that all ships in those areas, if they represented a danger to our ships, were vulnerable. So yes, that was the start of Margaret Thatcher' much longer exchange with a geography teacher called Diana Gould about the sinking of the Argentinian ship to Belgrrano Michael, as I was saying, it was one of the few moments when Margaret Thatcher appeared rattled during this campaign, but she was generally happy to be arguing with critics of the Falcons campaign. D that mom Did that moment land heavily? Did everybody notice that moment I don't remember the Belggano in the context of the campaign I remember the very much in the context of a Cive Pontnting acquittal Uh, when I with Margaret in number ten when the result was announced and I said I shall have to go to Cments and defend our position here. which I did. and the fact is that Margaret was absolutely right and the decisions she took The information available to her when she took the decision was quite clearly that the danger existed And this was a battlesit in an area where we had very large numbers of British troops ri Sally, the Labour Party really got stuck into a quagmire with nuclear weapons because of course, Michael Foot he'd been one of the founders of CND and he marched with them. But others like his deputy Denis Haney didn't agree with unilateral disarmament. It was a fight. It was a fight, but it was a fight it was the beginning of a fight, I would say. I mean, you know, the Labour Party manifesto wrongly in my view, but there we are was very clear on the issue. So I mean Dis Dennis and Co had lost the fight in the party that partly because a lot of the people who were in the same place as Dennis Healey had left and joined the SDP. So they they there sort of C u leadership of the party at that point was clearly very pro unilateral disarmament. And it took us a long time to move away from that. was It was one of the key tests. It was one of the key tests that Neil Kennet became more and more aware of that he knew in the end He had to move the party away from that position, but it took a long time So I would say that the fact that that clip became so famous and that Margaret Thatcher was thought to be on the back foot in it is an example of How Political analysis is so much better now than it was over the time. I mean, it's perfectly obvious listening to it, that nothing could be better than Margaret Thatcher than having some teacher come on and challenge her about the Belgrrano, probablyably her strongest issue and remind everybody what she did when everybody was basically in favor of what she was doing. The idea that Tom Dell and who was the politician who raised this in the commons the whole time and people like Diana Gould were winning on this issue is completely fantastical. Every time they raised it, more people voted conservative. So that I think is quite a good example of how much better our understanding is now of how things like that land. right? I mean, obviously, Michael was spending his whole campaign trying to make sure that issues like that, defense issues where labor was weak, remained at the top of the political agenda rather than issues on which we might come to later, the economy, where there was more of an even debate Well, that's exactly where I wanted to come to next. because I want to turn now to Thursday, may twenty sixth when the unemployment figures are released showing more three million people out of work The three million barrier had already been broken the year before and there was talk of Maggie's millions of unemployed. Michael, elections are normally won or lost on the economy. Why couldn't labor turn? sort of the flailing economy to their advantage at this point. becausecause people were feeling better off And that is the underlying ingredient in any election campaign The Indian This is a dangerous simplification Bn log There are two ways in which votes feel. Either of I' betterable In which case, I don't want the other guy to get in and ruin it Or I'm not better off and I want change And Fundamentally, all election campaigns have fought along those lines You can have better examples of different examples of why they think they're not better off or what they think the change might be B and large underlying That's the issue. And at the time of the eighty three election very large numbers of people were substantially better off, particularly Those who bought their own houses from the Council House saalors I remember looking at the figures how much people have actually made by buying at the discounted rate a freehold property in which they kn and how much more it was worth by the time of the election campaign But also everyeh's economy was beginning to deliver. But Danny, why do you I mean Do you agree with Michael's analysis there the idea that that although although unemployment was high, although the economy was not strong, the fact that it was improving's your whole Britain's on the right track. Yes. Look, you know, I learned that that whole idea hardly from Michael because I had the privilege of working with him in politics later in my career and it was instructional bas based on the issue of how government works and also on this issue of how elections work. So I completely agree with that. That was absolutely critical. What happened was that U the Conservative Party managed to create a track and it had begun to it was still at that stage in my view, saying to people, if you want to make progress, we've still got a lot of change to make. You can see that we've started. But underpinning that had to be an improvement in people's living standards because all these arguments about things like defense Those things could al or indeed even the vibe about Michael Michael Foot's Jacket, which was you know very important, like later Jeremy Corbyn and the national or Jeremy Corbn and you know the Srippal issue. So some of these things do become very important. They were very important, but underpinning it has got to be people's feelings. You know what? I feel a bit better off than I did a few months Usually it's a few month ago rather than at the beginning of this Parliament. Huring on All right, I thought I think it's something maybe a little different than that. I think there was u I think what Mrs. Thatcher did really successfully was take those kind of C one C two voters, particularly the C two voters, I suppose in It could be the new towns around the M twenty five, the Penine belt, all of those sorts of seats and offered She became the party of aspiration for those people. They For the first time, they thought, actually, I particularly right I think cououncil Houseselellves were much more significant than defense actually They were offered a chance to have something that they never thought they'd have and that their parents never had. and so they could see that they had a way forward. So although we were aware and I remember being, you know hugely aware of bluntly swathes of unemployment and s of places Lots of places really feeling extremely left behind, pretty devastated Nevertheless, they didn't there wasn't suicient number of people thought that labor would offer them a way forward in any way. whereereas there were a lot of people who felt they were on the way and they had a heck of a lot to lose. should Let's not forget the economic magic trick that did that, right? is that national utilities which had been overcapitalised, actually, not spending enough money and were' then privatized, which enabled a real gain to be made basically out of money that had been spent by the state in the fifties, sixties, and seventies was then released as cash essentially into the economy as a gain. And almost the exact same trick Hackenood right to buy in that money which had been invested by the state in the fifties sixties and seventies was then transferred to the individual gains that Michael's talking about And I mean, of course, you give people a bunch of money and say that this is liberalism. They're going to be happy actually was in my view, a fundamentally unfair way of allocating housing subsidy in particular Because instead of saying that we should share out housing subsidy for the people who need it, it's T the people who once needed it And it's actually at the root of our housing crisis that we've had ever since then I'm absolutely in awe in lots of ways of Margaret Thatcher's kind of political legacy We've also recognized that when politicians play economic tricks with the electorate to win votes, It has dire consequences. And every party does it. know the government I was a part of in twenty ten jacked up the housing market as well with kind of additional demand subsidies. And we talk about house prices rising still pathologically as if it's a good thing cost of stuff going up. is a bad thing It is right at the core of our economic malays right now. Michael, I mean, doesn't one doesn't often hear even conservatives really make the case for right to buy anymore. Do Do you look back on the policy as an unqualified success for transforming lives or the aspects of the economic cost like what Polly's talking about that give you a bit of pause. What I did, the deal I negotiated was an unqualified success But a lot of people have forgotten what the deal was. The deal was that we would enable people to buy their counsel houses or flats at a substantial discount and the important point was that seventy five percent of the proceeds would flow into the regeneration or recreation of more social housing And that was the deal I did and that was It lasted as long as I was in charge of the department After that, the treasury took the money away. And that it was a mistake. Um, and and u Um, well, I can only Repeat what I've said. There would not have been the social crisis in housing if my deal had been Okay. so the election itself was on Thursday, the ninth of June. Here is the start of the BBC's election night coverage presented by a very youthful David Dimbbleby Elections are a struggle for power, battles, if you like, and this one was at a time of the Prime Minister's choosing. She could have waited another year. But her choice seems to have paid off handsomely If our figures are right, she's going to have a landslide with a majority of about one hundred and forty six over all other parties in the New House of Commons. That'll be about the same as the majority that the Labour Party had In nineteen forty five The Conservatives are going to be about four hundred, Labor, two hundred and ten The alliance somewhere between twenty and twenty five, other parties about twenty three And the alliance in terms of the popular vote in the country, we say will be in third place behind labour prediction was almost spot on give or take a few seats. Lots of big names lost their seats, including Tony Bn and Sirly Williams. Harold Wilson retired from the Cons. The new intake that year included figures such as Tony Blair and Paddy Ashtown Michael, you were sitting in the BBC studio for that moment alongside Neil Kinnick. And he looks completely crushed. Do you remember it It's a very long time ago lotots of things have happened in my lug since then. I don't remember very detail, and I certainly don't remember the actual results. I remember the announcement that you have Mr. Kimblepeay But I don't remember being in a Jo with Nil Killer. let me ask the question another way then. I mean before before the results, before election night Hi How confident were you that this was going to be a tribe for at least a win Oh, I think with a con No yah in the scut U I mean, we knew on the doorstep what the right to buy had delivered for people We knew the legacy of the Falkland. We knew that there were U, Rising living standards quite comprehensively, and we knew that we had flattened CND. Um, and No, in an election campaign, you're out there you're not in any way separate from the people We knew what people were saying and how they were feeling So we knew we were on a winning street. It's been funny hearing Andy Burnham in the last few days talking about Britain being on the wrong track for forty years from his perspective. Do you think Michael is this the election he's talking about? because this is the victory that allowed thatchers to government unleash to push ahead with privatisation, trade unions, reform and so on all the stuff that people are handy Bone and still hate Look, I know Andy quite well because he's a mayor and I was responsible for creating the mayor of Dvolution. concept but he's a member of the Labour Party and he's now in that inidious position of having to appeal to the left wing of the Labour Party who will determine the new leader So he's going to say all sorts of things that I would advise him not to say, but thats. Obviously, the economic position that Margaret Fcher had taken in nineteen eighty one had been quite controversial with the left of the party and continue to be controversial with the left of the Conservative partarty. What was your own feeling about that up the time and then subsequently Well, you see my experience at that time Oh was that I was perhaps the most interventionist minister there has ever been from don Ier party Um And the interesting thing is that that was under Margaret Thatcher Everybody concentrates on the things we didn't intervene No for eighteen months Every Thursday, I went to Liverpool to mastermind Um, workforce of public private sector soirondes who were helping to prove locally that Liverpool could work. And as I say, that was the most interventionist thing that Any minister has ever done And Margaret was Prime Minister Indeed, the truth is that that time in nineteen eighty two, she told the Tory chf whip Michael Dropling she thought I was her natural successor So onene has to be realistic about what happened on the ground as opposed to the epithets that the commentators have trying to label it. Isn't it also though that really successful leaders like Thatcher, I would argue like Blad, in a sense recognize you've got to give space to other people in the party who might represent a slightly different set of politics, if you like, but oh well, but get on and do stuff And I think I think I think when people I think when people are really confident leaders, they find it easier to do that I have this today It a memory of Margaret We were colleagues and it's very important to understand what that word means. It doesn't mean friends. It means colleagues in the same team with the same purpose. and on two critical occasions. First over the setting up of the development corporations And secondly, on the decision to integrate the three services in the Ministry of Defense I was involved in conversations with Margaret, which went along these lines. This is the problem This is my solution And on the first of them Kease Joseph from Jeffrey How We're in the same room. There were just four of us And Margaret found for me On the other one, when the Ministry of Defense U integration had been on the agenda since the Mount Batten Reforms after the warar, and nobody had been able to grip the situation, which was basically that the seecretary of State s on top of three Armed forces or with their own agenda And there was absolutely no coalescence of the advice that he was getting or she was getting And I said to Margt, lookook, This M Patan was right. We've got to deal with this And I can tell you If I deal with it, they will be in here the next minute asking you to override me So there's no point in doing that. I'm talking to you about the issue now. Do you support me? Yes, she said And she did and they did go in the next day or Gun's blaring Um So Margaret W was much more practical But you have to Even if it The worst thing for to in contact with Margaret was to give in to her I mean, I saw people lose their cabinet jobs because she interrupted them and they just going quiet I learned. I mean and look, a middle class boy coming from a sort of conventional middle class family has a certain deference to women. I mean, I know its rather unfashionable stuff, but it's true, perfectly true And so when I was introducing papers to the cabinet Margaret would interrupt And so I waited until she pused for breath often some time And then I start again And she interrupt again And you just had to griit your teeth and say, this is my paper. I'm going to put it to cabinet, whether you like it or not And just in the end, she respected that Michael, one more question before we let you go. As you said, Margaret Thatcher, she saw you once as her natural successor. By nineteen ninety you' brought about her downfall by challenging her for the leadership. And you reflected then, as many have done since, he who wields the dagger never wears the crown. Are there lessons there for the people trying to remove Kistama at the moment? You must be thinking them. I didn't bring shot m etcetera That again is the simplicity of natural reporting U Anthony Mayer Ellen's her two years before she actually went I voted for precisely because I didn't want people to be able to say that I was threatening to bring her down. And I showed my ballot paper to the tellers in the committee room at the vote so that nobody could say I was lying U and then Jeffrey How resign That was what brought Margt down