could go no further in easing the pain, or her policy would have faced ridicule. Still the backbenches wanted more. By the autumn it was obvious the tax had to go; but Margaret was not ready to remove it. The muttering grew louder. Then a second wave of discontent hit Margaret. It was Europe. This time something had to give. It was to be her.
There were many myths which came to surround the fall of Margaret Thatcher. One of them is that she was brought down by a cabal of pro-European ‘wets’ for pursuing a clear and forthright line against anything to do with a united Europe. But nothing with Margaret Thatcher was ever quite that straightforward. For most of her time in government, her actions showed the Prime Minister to be as much a pragmatist over Europe as she was a sceptic: she tested new ideas to destruction before she accepted them, but accept them she very often did. Though many thought her line on Europe too abrasive, few disagreed with the decisions she ultimately took. She was unpersuaded on the need for a single currency, but was prepared to accept, even welcome, integration on issues such as the single market. Overall, the Prime Minister was undeniably ‘on board’ the European train, even though she was uneasy about where it was heading and complained loudly at every stop.
The trouble was that there was another Margaret Thatcher, usually confined to private quarters, whose gut reaction was much more hostile to Europe. She bridled at the very mention of Brussels, and was thought by many to share the views on Germany which Nick Ridley was quoted expressing in a Spectator interview in July 1990, and which were so intemperate he was forced to leave the Cabinet; he resigned, it was said, but in fact he did so at Margaret’s request conveyed through Charles Powell. He was effectively sacked. Nick was unlucky. He told me he had made his remarks privately after the end of the interview – but they were printed anyway, and they destroyed him. Margaret’s view was equally direct: ‘Never trust the Germans.’ Two world wars, she thought, proved that the country was expansionist by instinct. Britain’s role was to stop it. She organised a seminar on German reunification at Chequers, and voiced sentiments so hostile to Germany that they alarmed many of those who attended.
These two Margarets could co-exist. They did for most of her premiership, to great effect. But, after ten years in power, she began to lose the knack of keeping the two sides of her personality bolted together. It can be a terrible error to argue straight from your emotional bedrock, but the Prime Minister was beginning to do so; like a shorting circuit she flickered and crackled. Intermittently the lamp of European statesmanship still glowed; then – fssst! – and a shower of vivid commentary would light up the Margaret who attracted the last-ditch Englander. It cost her the trust of many in her party, but also gave her the devoted admiration of Members of Parliament she would never have put in her government.
It all came crashing down at the end of October 1990, when she answered questions in the House on her return from the Rome European Council. It was a summit meeting which need never have taken place, and at which she had been unexpectedly pushed on monetary union. A deal had been reached, and in the Commons the pragmatic prime minister who had achieved so much, the leader who recognised that we needed to take Britain into the ERM, was on display. ‘Of course we wish to see both the United Kingdom and the European Community flourish, and the government and the country have done a great deal to ensure that the Community does flourish,’ she soothed MPs at Prime Minister’s Questions. ‘I believe that solutions will be found which will enable the Community to go forward as Twelve,’ she said a few minutes later in her subsequent statement on the Rome summit.
Then the other Margaret Thatcher was unleashed. Monetary union – which she had signed up to in the Single European Act – was nothing more than ‘a back door to a federal Europe’. My own scheme for a hard ecu (which could have unified Conservative opinion because it would have let the market decide whether we ever entered the single currency) was brushed aside even though she had agreed it. ‘In my view,’ she suddenly told the House, ‘the hard ecu would not become widely used throughout the Community.’
I nearly fell off the bench. With this single sentence she wrecked months of work and preparation. Europe had been suspicious that the hard ecu was simply a tactic to head off a single currency, and now the Prime Minister, in a matter of a few words, convinced them it was. Nor had she finished. She reached for her gun. ‘The President of the Commission, Mr Delors, said at a press conference the other day 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.’
As I listened, astonished at her outburst, I understood where it came from. It was pure frustration. She had returned from the Rome Council bruised and bursting to speak. She had been stung by Geoffrey Howe’s statement on the Walden programme that the hard ecu could in time become a single currency. Even so, she had still made a prepared statement in line with policy – as a prime minister must. Then, in response to a question, she lunged into that now-famous unscripted outburst. I heard our colleagues cheer, but knew there was trouble ahead. As I was to find, it is very easy in the cockpit of the House of Commons to overemphasise noisily for fear that somebody will interpret a soft answer as a prelude to a shifting position. That carries great risks.
The immediate effect was to dislodge Geoffrey Howe, who resigned the following day. Though the fire in Margaret’s Commons stand was impressive as a display, she seemed, as Geoffrey wrote later, to be ‘breaking ranks with her own party’. I heard of the resignation as I drove into the Commons in the early evening. There were not many Tories about, but small groups were gathered together in heated speculation. Geoffrey was the kind of figure every government needs if it is to thrive. What attracted him about politics was not the drama or the glamour, but the substantive building up of policy. His departure could not easily be explained away, and I thought our hopes of winning the next election were fading. But even then, I did not imagine that Geoffrey’s resignation spelled the end for the Prime Minister. Neither did the next day’s Times: it described her leadership as ‘robust, undaunted and unchallenged’.
In fact we were in real trouble, and it was getting worse. The Chancellor had resigned; the Deputy Prime Minister had resigned. And these two senior colleagues were long marchers, architects of much of our programme and of the intellectual force behind Thatcherism. If they were disillusioned, what was happening to relationships between the most long-serving members of the government?
I would not have been surprised if Geoffrey had left the previous year, when he was removed from the Foreign Office to become Leader of the House and nominal Deputy Prime Minister: it was a blatant demotion. But he had stayed on, to be treated with increasing intolerance by the Prime Minister. Her general tone towards him was sharp, occasionally even cruel. If he felt aggrieved, he would have been justified in doing so.
His last Cabinet meeting, on the morning of his resignation, was the worst of all. Geoffrey and Margaret were sitting side by side, directly opposite me. They could barely bring themselves to look at one another. Geoffrey stared down at his papers, his lips pursed; Margaret had a disdainful air, her eyes glittering. When he looked down the long Cabinet table, she looked up it. When she put her head down to read her notes, he looked straight up. The body language said it all. This treatment of a senior colleague was embarrassing for the whole Cabinet. Few, if any, members would have stood it for long; and none without resentment. Geoffrey, who has a placid temperament, did not know how to deal with it. He was – in the face of this ill-mannered lady – too much of a gentleman.
Nigel was gone. Now Geoffrey was gone. Michael Heseltine was waiting. Michael had long been a vocal critic of Margaret’s policies on Europe and the Poll Tax, and now believed himself vindicated on both. He felt, too, that he had been the victim of dirty work at the crossroads over the Westland Helicopters affair, which had led to his storming out of the Cabinet in 1986. Of all Margaret’s colleagues, he was obviously the best-placed to challenge her. Michael was able. He was experienced. He was the best platform orator in the party. Temperamentally, he was the wolf that hunted alone, but he had a large body of supporters who
