Edwina Currie ‘Salmonella got me on Strictly’

You don’t get much sympathy as a politician – and rightly so. It’s a tough old business. But very occasionally there are days that deliver not scandal or bad headlines, but a small sense of vindication. Yesterday, with the news that Britain’s Lion Mark eggs are now safe and salmonella‑free, that day came for me.

Eggs. For many people, my career – and its end – is still defined by eggs. But in 1988, when I went on the television news to warn of the salmonella in our eggs, I wasn’t making a mistake. Rather, I knew we had a serious problem and that I was going to say something. In fact, I sought out a really big audience to say it to.

The truth is that some 500 people a week were being taken ill – not just sick, but admitted to hospital, off work for weeks. The 30,000 proven cases that year were only a tiny proportion of the real total; salmonella was mentioned on 60 death certificates.

The words I used were carefully chosen. I did not say: “Don’t eat eggs.” I said: “Cook them and they will be safe. But soft‑boiled eggs can be very dangerous.” True, I said “most” eggs were infected, when I should have said “much” of our egg production had a problem, but testing showed a high proportion did indeed have the bug.

Then the egg industry went ballistic. When you’re in the centre of a big political row, you’re not quite sure what’s going on. It’s quite quiet, actually. You’re in the eye of the storm, and all the noise is happening around you.

I must say, I did expect Mrs Thatcher to rally round, maybe tell the farmers to get their act together. She was so courageous on so many issues, tackling injustice, and to me it was clear that there was rank injustice in farmers passing off bad produce to consumers. But she didn’t. She saw it in terms of votes. I won’t say I felt betrayed, but I was very puzzled.

There were some mad moments. The egg producers started talking about writs. You can’t defame an egg. Still, faced with all the anger, it was put to me that I might like to resign – and I thought: “If they’re not going to look after their people, well then, I’m a capable person, I can do other things.” So I did.

Of course quite soon, only a few months later, lots of other people were saying just what I’d said, loud and clear. In the end, even the egg producers came to me and admitted as much. Weirdly, perhaps, I now admire them enormously. They had the guts to admit they did something wrong; and more than that, they had the guts to do something about it – and spent a lot of money doing so.

Now they have to have really high standards of hygiene and transport. The levels of welfare have rocketed. The industry has changed beyond compare. But the government of the day should have tackled it – it really wasn’t that difficult. Instead, they used a lot of public money to slaughter huge numbers of hens, to little effect.

But I have no regrets. Far from it. When I was pushed out, I was forced to think about life outside politics. That is a really tough call for someone who has given their life to it. But in truth it’s been absolutely fantastic. I’ve done so many things, I’ve written novels, I’ve been on Strictly. All

I can say is that the end of my career proved the beginning of a great new life. And if you were to say, given yesterday’s news, that my biggest political disaster actually turned out to be a bit of a triumph, well, I couldn’t possibly comment.