Some calming words from a grown-up
With Britain back in lockdown, amid the most contested election in US history, anxiety has been high in the Planet Normal spaceship. So we felt it was time to hear from a calm, reflective, grown-up.
Charles Moore, our fellow Telegraph columnist, has written a towering three-part biography of Margaret Thatcher. The final volume, Herself Alone, is just out in paperback.
Having won three general elections and been prime minister for more than 11 years, Thatcher was ousted by her own MPS, 30 years ago this month. “She had become so much more eminent than her cabinet colleagues she was cut off from, and became rather contemptuous of them,” says Moore. “So she lost friends, not least over Europe.”
But Thatcher showed that “you can bring about economic recovery using free market economics”, says Moore, “and if you believe in your own civilisation, you can defeat your opponents, as she did at the end of the Cold War”. While acknowledging she was “divisive”, he argues she was “very successful in that she got so much done – whether you agreed with her or not”.
How does Moore feel Boris Johnson is doing in office, a Prime Minister he once employed as a columnist?
“I don’t feel Covid is endangering his position – the Government has a big majority and another four years to run,” he says. “But the problems he faces are enormous, and many of the criticisms justified.”
And what about Trump? “He has exposed the weakness and self-serving nature of the US establishment,” says Moore. “But he has done so in a way that is untrustworthy, ungenerous and unpleasant – opening up a big problem that needs solving, but without solving it.”