The dead sheep who turned – and gored PM like a Spanish bull
THERE is a certain irony that Geoffrey Howe should die so soon after Denis Healey, who so famously taunted him in the Commons. But just as Denis made his peace with Tony Benn, Geoffrey was not the kind of man to hold Healey’s wounding ‘dead sheep’ jibe against him. He bore it with the same good grace with which he later accepted Margaret Thatcher’s unjustified behaviour towards him.
I last saw Geoffrey a few months ago at Leon Brittan’s memorial service, and, having known him in his prime, I was desperately upset to see him so pitifully reduced physically, a sad shadow of the bulky yet vigorous man that he once was.
Mrs Thatcher once famously said every Prime Minister ‘needs a Willie’ in reference to William Whitelaw. But she also needed a Geoffrey, although she was foolish to forget that at a crucial moment in her career.
Geoffrey was never understood by his political opponents, nor given the respect he deserved for sustaining Mrs Thatcher in office throughout her time in office.
He was an old-style lawyer/ politician, totally committed to politics in a way that few of that type of MP really were. He never forgot those quintessential legal skills of absorbing evidence and separating the wheat from the chaff, and became one of the steadiest and ultimately most successful post-war Chancellors.
That first Thatcher Government was a close-run thing. Geoffrey, as Chancellor throughout this period, had to show another of his greatest attributes – steadiness under fire – to get through it.
But the rolling back of the State, in every manifestation, of the quasi-East German economy that he and Thatcher inherited was as much his achievement as hers. Yes, she set the rhetorical framework but it was Geoffrey who put in the hard yards to deliver it all.
I first encountered Geoffrey when I was 15, reading an article he wrote for the Young Conservatives magazine. He was the newly elected MP for Bebington, a love affair with Merseyside which was not to last. But the misfortune of losing his seat in 1966 did not deter him. Once he retreated to the safe pastures of Surrey – first as MP for Reigate and then for Surrey East – there was no stopping him.
I really got to know him as one of his Ministers of State during his time as Foreign Secretary, a position he held from 1983 until 1989. Geoffrey was a solid, unspectacular exponent of civilised British democracy. He accepted with as much patience and politeness as was possible Mrs Thatcher’s constant interference. Her willingness to undermine, and even say harsh words about him, was like water off a duck’s back. Or at least it was until a breaking point, even for Geoffrey, was reached. Then the dead sheep turned and gored her like a Spanish bull in such a wounding (and justified) attack that she could not survive it.
As much as anything, it was that speech in November 1990 that brought her down.
Geoffrey was sad that this, rather than his years of loyal service, is what he will be most remembered for. But that speech conveys the essential truth about Geoffrey. Beneath that slightly bumbling exterior, there lurked a man as passionate about politics as Mrs Thatcher was. A man she was foolish to underestimate. From a much lowlier position, that was something I never did.
Which is why my tribute to Geoffrey, one of the outstanding politicians of his generation, is as heartfelt as it is.