Johnson ‘may have triggered Thatcher’s downfall’

■ Claims over Delors plan for Europe ‘not quite right’ ■ Tory split reveals pressures Premier was under

A NEWSPAPER article penned by the UK’s current Prime Minister Boris Johnson may have led to Margaret Thatcher’s downfall, newly released documents suggest.

While working as the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels Correspondent in 1990, Mr Johnson wrote an article about European Commission president Jacques Delors, which has been described as “not quite right”.

It was headlined ‘British Right Of Veto Faces Axe In Delors Plan’ and Mrs Thatcher marked two lines beside the headline on a cutting of the article in her despatch box file.

She also marked two lines beside a paragraph which read “the plans were intended to pave the way for a Federation of Europe, a super-state with the Brussels Commission as the executive government”.

And six days after the article was published Mrs Thatcher made a statement in which she defiantly declared “no, no, no” to M Delors.

The statement came during a time of intense division in the Tory party over Europe and Sir Geoffrey Howe quit as leader of the Commons and Deputy Prime Minister, making a devastating resignation speech. Mrs Thatcher was ousted a few days later.

But Chris Collins, from the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust, said Mr Johnson’s article was “not quite right”. A memo written two days later to Mrs Thatcher’s Private Secretary Charles Powell, noted: “The Commission Opinion itself... does not contain what M Delors is reported by the Daily Telegraph as having suggested.”

Mr Collins said: “A lot of Conservatives would read articles like that one by Boris Johnson – I’m sure it wasn’t the only one written at the time – and say ‘yes, that’s what these guys (in Brussels) are up to’.

“Those pressures are all around her and she is treading this terribly, perilously difficult path. It’s not clear that she wanted a war, as it were, and yet she feels many of these things too and she’s got this sinuous route to follow.

“While I’m not saying this is the cause of her downfall or anything like that – it would be absurd to suggest that – the forces that are in play are somewhat revealed by the presence of that article.”

PICTURES: PA MAKING AN IMPRESSION: Clockwise from top, Margaret Thatcher wore an outfit she labelled ‘Pink Chanel Gorbachev’ on her visit to the set of Coronation Street in 1990; at Abbey Road Studios where she met Mike Batt, composer of The Wombles theme tune; with chief press secretary Sir Bernard Ingham, to whom she wrote a letter of thanks following her resignation; with actor William Roache outside the Rovers Return.