No! No! No!
Exactly 40 years after she became PM, Mrs Thatcher’s former confidant says if she were around today, her message to those trying to overturn Brexit would be …
FORTY years ago this weekend, just four days before Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 General Election which made her Prime Minister, she telephoned me in my Kent constituency.
Her daughter Carol, my girlfriend at the time, was staying in my home, helping with our campaign. Her mother wanted to touch base with the news from Thanet.
After a conversation about our canvass returns, which like everywhere else in the country were showing a sizeable swing to the Conservatives, I realised that the next time I might be speaking to her, she would be in Downing Street. So I wished her good luck.
‘Not luck. We’ll win because we deserve to win,’ she responded in her usual forceful manner. ‘ And then there’s a big job to be done. It will need determination, courage, loyalty on our backbenches and commitment to a clear strategy.’
I noted the Leader of the Opposition’s words in my diary. As a recipe for political success, they are as relevant in 2019 as they were in 1979. To set them in context, it should be remembered that the crisis Britain faced 40 years ago was i nfinitely worse than our Brexit-induced troubles today.
The economy was the basket case of Europe, with rampant inflation, high unemployment, sclerotic nationalised i ndustries, and a strike-ravaged industrial relations quagmire which had sucked the country into the terrifying winter of discontent.
On the Election hustings, a frequent question was: ‘Has Britain become ungovernable?’ Gloom and suffocating pessimism reigned. Brexit is a walk in the park by comparison.
There is much to be learned about the solutions for today’s crisis by pondering on the extraordinary record of Mrs Thatcher in revitalising Britain and its flagging economy, dispelling t he poison of i ndustrial unrest in the process. And pondering, too, on the way she did it.
Let’s start by reflecting on the words she used in her call to me.
‘ Courage and determination’: these were qualities that Mrs Thatcher possessed in abundance. She was fond of quoting Edmund Burke: ‘One man with conviction makes a majority.’
She relished a sharp argument – sometimes too sharp – to justify her convictions. Often she would open a discussion at Cabinet meetings in high-handed style by saying, ‘I have decided that…’ or ‘I think we must…’ She always led from the front. Recent Prime Ministers have been rather more collegiate, using emollient opening lines such as, ‘Let’s hear the voices on this issue…’ This has allowed the Cabinet to sound like the Tower of Babel over Brexit.
As Mrs Thatcher eventually fell because of her deplorably poor man- management of her senior colleagues, particularly Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson, it should be acknowledged that her abrasive style of leadership was sometimes counter-productive.
Yet at times of her greatest challenges, such as the Falklands War, the miners’ strike, and her perseverance with an unpopular strategy of public expenditure discipline, she earned the greenest garlands for determined leader
ship and political courage. ‘Loyalty on our backbenches’: those words may have been a none-too-subtle dig at the 45 per cent of Conservative MPs in the mid-1970s who did not vote for her in the leadership election and were not paid- up Thatcherites. But as Prime Minister, she need not have worried. Forty years ago, the prevailing ethos of parliamentary loyalty was completely different.
There were plenty of internal arguments. But defiance of a threeline whip vote in the House of Commons was almost beyond the pale for backbenchers and utterly unthinkable for Ministers at the time. So Mrs Thatcher could count on her troops, which Theresa May manifestly cannot. (Four Cabinet Ministers ignored a three-line whip last month and, rebelling, voted against a No Deal Brexit.)
‘Clear strategy’: Mrs Thatcher always had one. For a long while it was far less divisive than revisionist commentators have claimed.
The ‘Old Labour’ opposition, initially led by Jim Callaghan after his defeat in 1979, knew the abuses of union power that erupted in the winter of discontent had to change, as did the extravagant spending excesses of nationalised industries. Even Neil Kinnock opposed Arthur Scargill calling a miners’ strike without a ballot.
So despite the bellowings of sound and fury from the hard-Left, the mainstream Labour opposition gave Mrs Thatcher an easy ride – and so did many Labour voters.
It is often forgotten that she broke new ground in capturing votes that had never before been won from Labour by the Conservatives.
Post- Election analysis of the voting figures in 1979 showed that among what were then called C2s, or skilled working- class voters, Mrs Thatcher achieved a swing of 11 per cent to the Tories.
With the C3s, or unskilled working-class voters, the swing to the Conservatives was nine per cent. This was twice as big a swing as the rest of the electorate gave her.
That blue-collar support stayed solidly behind her for most of the 1980s, boosted by populist policies such as the sale of council houses. It was the bedrock on which she built her premiership.
In her old age, Lady Thatcher used to claim an intuitive, almost mystical, affinity with the feelings of ordinary working voters. I remember her banging the table at a dinner in my London home as she proclaimed: ‘ Trust the people! Trust the ordinary people of this country! That’s what I always did.’
Her words at that festive party are a guide to what she might be saying about today’s political and parliamentary chaos.
She despised the notion that holding a referendum could provide solutions for the governance of Britain. She rode roughshod over those who made such suggestions when s he was i n power. She believed the will of the people was expressed through parliamentary election results.
Nevertheless, when, against her wishes, the Callaghan government held a referendum on Scottish and Welsh devolution in 1976?? (which were decisively rejected by the el ectorate at t hat t i me), Mrs Thatcher respected the result and had no time for those who tried to resurrect the issue. ‘The people have spoken,’ she said.
WHEN David Cameron’s EU referendum was originally floated as a possibility, Lady Thatcher pr i - vately called it ‘ a cop- out’. But had she lived to see the No vote of 2016, it is certain that she would have respected it, and liked it because it was in tune with her own populist instincts.
Who can ever forget that electrifying moment when she reported to the Commons on October 30, 1990, after a turbulent EU summit in Rome, where she had battled fiercely against attempts to impose European Monetary Union (EMU). To cheers f rom most parts of the House ( although noticeably excluding Howe, Heseltine and a handful of Europhile Tories), Mrs Thatcher fired a salvo of triple negatives at Jacques Delors, president of the EU Commission.
‘He said that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the Community, he wanted the Commission to be the Executive, and he wanted the Council of Ministers to be the Senate. No! No! No!’
Her disdain for Mr Delors in 1990 would have been replicated towards the European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker today on the grounds that both these high functionaries of Brussels were unelected bureaucrats.
Mrs Thatcher would have entered into passionate face-to-face arguments on Brexit much earlier with the elected leaders of Europe, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron, just as she did in her day with Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl.
Over-riding the Sir Humphreys of Brussels, she would have done her damnedest to convince the German Chancellor and the French President that leaving without a deal was a serious default option for Britain.
Mrs Thatcher was too much of an economic realist to want a No Deal scenario, but she would not have been scared of it. So as a negotiator, she would have had the credible firepower that Mrs May has lacked.
My guess is that, faced with
She wouldn’t have been scared by No Deal, so she would have had the f irepower Mrs May has lacked
Thatcher, the French, Irish and German leaders would have blinked, and a deal would have been done.
And if she was parachuted back to Earth from her celestial perch as a resurrected Prime Minister to take charge of the present situation? My hunch is that she would surprise us with a combination of her caution and courage.
Her cautious side, which was often stronger than she let on, might cause her to be more pragmatic than the zealous Eurosceptics of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s ERG faction. As her long-standing No 10 Private Secretary Charles Powell reminded me: ‘She knew how to make a noise and also how to retreat.’
My feeling is that she might be willing to retreat in order to seek a year’s delay so that her often-voiced Thatcher’s law – ‘in politics, the unexpected always occurs’ – could take its course. For a 12-month delay could well create a completely new and unexpected political landscape in both Britain and Europe.
The impending Euro elections may demonstrate the huge unpopularity of the EU not only in the UK but across all the 27 other member states. The hardliners of the Brussels Commission, notably Mr Juncker, will have retired by the end of this year. The Conservative Party will surely have held a leadership election. New blood in Brussels and in No 10 should produce new ideas and new energy, leading to a new deal.
Mrs Thatcher would then seek the nation’s support for what she had negotiated. Not by a second referendum – which would make her throw up – but by a full-blooded General Election in which she would relish going into battle against Jeremy Corbyn and his socialist economic policies.
If only we could bring back Maggie, who al ways yearned f or a f ourth t erm in No 10. The skill, determination and sheer bravery of our greatest Prime Minister since the war are needed more than ever. STRICTLY Come Dancing star Kevin Clifton may be dropped as a partner for celebrities on the BBC show after details of his history as a love rat emerged in The Mail on Sunday.
His second wife Clare Craze last week told the MoS how she was left heartbroken and attempted to take her own life when he ended their marriage and began a relationship with Karen Hauer, who he went on to marry.
He is now going out with BBC star Stacey Dooley, who he partnered as she won last year’s series of Strictly.
Clifton was labelled a ‘slippery snake’ by Ms Dooley’s ex boyfriend Sam Tucknott in an interview in the MoS two weeks ago,
Yesterday there were reports that fellow Strictly professional Katya Jones, 29, has been axed from the main troupe and offered the role of a background dancer after the scandal of her being pictured kissing comedian Seann Walsh last year. His longterm girlfriend Rebecca Humphries broke up with him after he was caught with Jones, who is married to choreographer Neil Jones.
BBC bosses now face being accused of sexism if they allow Clifton, 36, to return to his job on the show h on which he has been a professional since 2013.
Asked whether Clifton will get the same treatment as Katya, a BBC spokesman said :‘ We wouldn’t be treating her any differently to how we treated Kevin. It’ s not like he is guaranteed a celebrity partner this year.’
Clifton was summoned by Strictly bosses last week after Ms Craze told this newspaper how h she h overdosed d on anxiety pills, washed down with wine - but it was only to make sure that he was OK.
‘ There were conversations, someone would have spoken to him to check in on him and his welfare after reading a story like that,’ added the spokesman.
‘Someone had a conversation to ask him what the story was all about, enough for them to feel comfortable that there is nothing in it t hat would r ai s e any concerns. There is a duty of care to the dancers and the people who work with them on the production to make sure everyone is all right.’
Three-times married Clifton, split from his third wife Karen two years ago after he was partnered with Louise Redknapp on the show.
Miss Redknapp split from her footballer husband Jamie shortly after the series following 19 years of marriage.