Charles Moore:

‘What would Maggie do?’’ Being the authorised biographer of Margaret Thatcher, I never make a speech about her without someone asking me this question. Just now, people ask it in relation to the EU referendum. I always give the same answer, which is that I do not know (and nor does anyone else). My selling point is that I write about what she did do, not what she might have done.

Charles Powell, her most important private secretary, now believes that she would have negotiated a deal quite like David Cameron’s latest, and urged a Remain vote. Norman Tebbit, one of her most senior and like-minded ministers, says the opposite. I shall not break my rule by agreeing or disagreeing with either.

But the story of Mrs Thatcher and Europe does reveal something interesting. The whole time she was in office, she never said that Britain should leave. Once she had left office, she said privately – to me and several others – that she thought we should.

This is part of a wider phenomenon: politicians, when in power, almost always favour staying. It is known to annoy David Cameron, for example, that Nigel Lawson and Norman Lamont, both supporters of membership as ministers, now campaign for us to Leave: they are displaying, Downing Street critics say, the heady irresponsibility of old age.

There could be another explanation, however. When you are a minister, especially Prime Minister, it is hard not to think that things will fundamentally be all right, because you are in charge. Once you leave office, you become a private citizen, which makes you closer to a typical voter. Then you see more clearly that the EU is an adventure playground for the powerful elites, and markedly less fun for everyone else. The referendum is the unique occasion for the people, not the elites, to express their views.

I wrote recently about the strange case of Bishop George Bell, the brave Bishop of Chichester who supported German Christian opposition to Hitler and attacked the Allied blanket bombing of civilians in the Second World War. The current Church authorities announced last year that Bell, who died in 1958, had abused a child in the late 1940s and that they were paying compensation to the victim. Like many others, I protested about the secretive process by which the Church found against Bell. Had anyone investigated fully the claims made against him by the alleged victim? Had anyone, as natural justice requires, heard his case? Could the facts – so hard to establish more than 65 years on – be properly known?

Last week, the alleged victim, under the alias of Carol, spoke publicly for the first time, in the Brighton Argus. She said she remembered the bishop as ‘‘this figure, all in black, standing on a stair, waiting’’. Under the guise of reading her a bedtime story in his palace, where one of her relatives worked, he would put her on his knee and interfere with her, she said: this began when she was five, and ended when she was nine.

The same day, the current Bishop of Chichester, Martin Warner, put out a statement in which he attacked ‘‘strident voices’’ who had criticised his finding against Bell: they were ‘‘adding to the suffering of the survivor’’. He praised Carol’s courage.

One gets the strong sense that Bishop Warner is using Carol as a human shield. When the settlement was announced, almost all information was withheld, making it impossible to know what was being alleged. Now, because of Carol, more details have been put out, but not in a form which reveals anything about the process of justice. The fact that she can publish her version, with Bishop Warner’s support, adds to the sense that only one side of the case is being heard. Bishop Warner is right that speaking out must be painful to Carol, but he could have saved her this pain if he had been frank himself.

It is for him, not her, to answer the key questions. Why was no lawyer or church official tasked with defending Bell in the hearings? Why were people who knew Bell well and worked with him then – and are still alive – not asked for their evidence? Were his voluminous papers and diaries not consulted so that his daily habits could have been studied? Why should we be expected to believe a secret panel of ‘‘experts’’ convened by the diocese and Lambeth Palace when both have admitted such grave mistakes in the past?

In her interview, Carol understandably asked: ‘‘Why did the Church pay me? They must have believed me, I assume.’’ This is much the same question as critics of Bishop Warner are asking. They do not seek to attack Carol. She, like all people claiming wrong done to them may, or may not, be telling the truth. The critics simply want to know what evidence, scrutinised by what process, made the Bishop and his secret team believe Carol, and pay her. He should tell the Brighton Argus.

By the way, the man in charge of child abuse procedures throughout the Church of England is the Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler. Asked in the House of Lords recently about the abuse allegedly committed by Bishop Bell, he said “there has been no declaration that we [the Church authorities] are convinced that this took place’’. What on earth does the Church think, then, and what are the facts?