‘Thatcher should be ashamed’

Norman Fowler was central to the Tories’ 1980s rise and 1990s collapse – but his diaries, while rich and diligent, are oddly cool on Mrs T herself

THE BEST OF ENEMIES: DIARIES 1980-1997 by Norman Fowler

592pp, Biteback, T £25 (0844 871 1514), RRP£25

I love political diaries: their indiscretions, their spiteful asides, their confirmation that honourable friends were, in fact, mostly at daggers drawn. Alan Clark’s come to mind, as do Tony Benn’s or, going back further, Chips Channon’s. As one former minister advised a Cabinet newbie: “The first thing to do is look round the table and think, ‘Which of these b------s is keeping a diary?’”

Lord Fowler, 85, has waited a long time to publish his Diaries, which end in 1997 as Labour come to office. They are more a record of Thatcher and Major’s premierships, and less about Fowler himself; and while he acknowledges the impact of Thatcher on Britain, his preference is evidently for Major – who made him Tory Party chairman – though Fowler could be frustrated by the latter’s thin-skinned reaction to media criticism.

Few of the unseemly hallmarks of more notorious diaries intrude here. Fowler is pretty much unfailingly polite and nice to everyone bar the claque that gathered around Thatcher and gave Major such a hard time. His only real venom is reserved for Thatcher in the aftermath of the crushing 1997 defeat: “She backed Major as the only man who could beat Heseltine and then withdrew her support once that purpose had been served. She should be thoroughly ashamed of her role… As for John himself, he never received the credit for his achievements – the victory in 1992, the opt-outs at Maastricht and, above all, the strongest economy since the war.”

As someone who covered this period as a political journalist, I can say that there’s much truth in those

observations, but the real problem was the removal of Thatcher to begin with. As the beneficiary of the assassination, Major was never going to find life easy, especially with the members who revered her.

Even if these diaries feel a bit Pooterish at times, Fowler is far from a nobody. He became one of the most experienced politicians of his generation, joining Thatcher’s government in 1979 as transport minister and serving throughout her term. She clearly trusted and relied upon him to deliver and not come with complaints.

His most difficult time with her was when, as health secretary, he had to convince her to back a

graphic campaign to contain Aids, and sought to persuade her to make a television broadcast about the risks (which she vetoed). Fowler put a great deal of time and emotion into this issue, and his efforts helped to contain Aids without causing a backlash against the gay population.

It was one of Fowler’s great unsung achievements. His popularity in Parliament was evident when he was elected Speaker of the Lords in 2016: his virtues of propriety, competence and self-effacement are too easily scorned in an era of braggadocio and faux celebrity. A bit more mud-slinging wouldn’t have gone amiss, mind you.

The main man: Norman Fowler with then-PM Margaret Thatcher in 1982