Callaghan in ’79. The only thing that stopped them taking action was their terror that we would call their bluff. I wanted them to try it, so we could announce an election on one simple question: who rules Britain? Them or us? The democratic parliament that you elected? Or a bunch of union leaders that you did not? I wanted to hit them in the face with it. The unions circled, waiting for their chance, snapping and barking, but not daring to bite. I repeatedly told the Lady that if she insisted on holding a General Election in 1983, the only way she could win would be to engineer a crisis.
‘A crisis?’ she said, the way Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell said ‘a handbag?’ ‘Did you say a crisis, Robin?’
I gulped.
‘Take on the unions, Prime Minister. Make it Them or Us. Take on the despots.’
She smiled. Marilyn Monroe. Then she shook her head. The miners had destroyed Heath. The public sector workers had destroyed Callaghan. She did not feel strong enough to risk being destroyed in ’83, though I thought she might be destroyed anyway, and it was better to go down fighting. And then! And then! Hallelujah! Along came a better class of despot, from the other side of the world. Thank god for General Galtieri! A central casting villain! A proto-fascist South American in a bad uniform, with the air of a man who could strut even when sitting down! Just what we needed. What luck!
When Galtieri sent his Argentine conscript troops to the Falklands, I confess that most British people, including me, could not have pinpointed the godforsaken islands on a map. Peter Carrington, decent man, resigned as Foreign Secretary. Someone had to carry the can. It could not be her, of course. We were agreed on that. So it had to be him. The truth is, we had all ballsed it up. We had a British submarine lurking off the coast of the Falklands for a while and then removed it in the name of ‘constructive dialogue’. Not only that, we told everybody we had removed it, including the Argentine military dictatorship. I don’t recall the word ‘dialogue’ being much used in the Lady’s presence thereafter. It also taught us a lesson about dictators, Saddam Hussein and the like. You can show them the brink, but they never pay attention until they fall over it. The Lady knew this was her crisis. Her moment in history. Winning was never the most important thing to her. It was the only thing.
‘It’s a carrot and a stick policy with Galtieri,’ she told Cabinet the Thursday following the invasion, slapping her tiny right hand on the table. ‘He can get his troops out immediately, or we will destroy him.’
There was much bemusement around the room. People looked at their hands, or at their papers, not at the Lady and certainly not at each other. Every single person present around that Cabinet table wondered if she would fail, including her. Every single person present wondered who would succeed her, if she did fail. Including her.
‘Why is that a carrot and stick policy, Prime Minister?’ one of the plotters, one of the Wets, emboldened by the Lady’s perceived weakness, dared to ask. It was Michael Armstrong, then at the Home Office. A Shit.
‘What’s the carrot?’
The Lady glared at him.
‘The carrot, Michael, is that we won’t use the stick.’
The Cabinet went silent. Michael Armstrong looked as if he had swallowed his tongue. He was booted up to the Lords by the end of the year. The Lady went into a frenzy of hyperactivity, spurred on by the mutterings about whether she was up to the job. One or two backbenchers privately talked about her being Neville Chamberlain in a frock. I nailed them for it.
‘I am sure the Prime Minister will respond to your comments,’ I told Gowing and Mattings, two spivs of the old sort I caught lunching in Victoria. Double breasted blue pinstripe suits and oily hair. Sharks in shark’s clothing. Friends of Armstrong. ‘If you care to mention your misgivings to the Lady personally, she will most definitely respond. And I am sure the Chief Whip could arrange a meeting. Perhaps you could bring Michael Armstrong along to lend his support?’
Gowing and Mattings looked as if I had shot them. Which of course I had. And then … It is difficult to keep a straight face, recalling the moment, but one must never underestimate two things about politicians: their cowardice and their stupidity. Gowing and Mattings thought they would blacken me by spreading word of what I had said. What a lark! First they told Armstrong, and then some of the worst elements of the 1922 Committee. In total confidence, of course – which meant it leaked to the press in time for the next morning’s papers. The idea was to make me look bad. The idiots! From being that amiable old academic buffer Robin Burnett who loves his economics charts, his Laffer’s Curve and his lectures on the difference between Tax Take and Tax Rate, I suddenly became Mac the Knife. The Enforcer. It got out into the Telegraph and the Mail. The Mail called me ‘Bovver Boy Burnett’, and I was metamorphosed into ‘the Lady’s hard man’, according to the Guardian. Their cartoonist drew me as a skinhead with bovver boots! Ooooh, how that hurt! Ha! Let’s just say there was no more talk of Neville Chamberlain in a frock after that. Only of Winston Churchill. The Empire Strikes Back. The steel fist. The Iron Lady. I loved it. And, more importantly, so did She! What times we had! The Lady’s energy was infectious. It was as if I was taking a major policy decision once an hour, like Old Faithful, erupting with ideas around the clock, changing the country, gush, gush, gush, as the Lady started to change the world.
Once a week or so I was summoned to Downing Street for a late night whisky and soda. One night, after the Royal Navy Task Force had set sail but before there had been any significant engagement in the war, she told me I was to be despatched to Washington. As her special envoy. Washington?
‘Good,’ I said, puzzled. I hadn’t a clue. I smiled with enthusiasm.
‘Robin, you have a safe pair of hands,’ the Lady explained. Geoffrey was there. And Bernard. And the Defence Secretary, who quipped that I was to use my safe pair of hands to milk the teats of the American administration for everything they’d got. Everyone laughed. I pretended to laugh along with them.
‘The Task Force is to liberate the Falklands from the Argies,’ Bernard said, ‘and you are to liberate the Reagan administration from the peculiar belief that they should not upset General Galtieri.’
‘He’s their son-of-a-bitch in Latin America,’ Geoffrey chimed in. ‘They love him because he hates Communists.’
‘So did Hitler,’ I said. ‘And look where that got us.’
‘Precisely,’ the Lady agreed.
The Reaganauts were going to do their bit for us whether they wanted to or not.
‘The entire fate of the government depends upon your success,’ the Lady told me, a little redundantly. ‘You have contacts and friendships in Washington. Use them. Get them on-side, Robin.’
‘There are competing baronies in Washington, Prime Minister,’ I told her. ‘You can usually only appeal to one baron by alienating another, but I’ll do my best.’
‘You bring me solutions,’ the Lady said. ‘Others just bring me problems.’
She poured me another whisky.
‘And you’ll need a bit of extra nourishment,’ she winked, handing me the glass. Marilyn Monroe.
There was to be an open part of the trip and a covert part. The open part was that I was scheduled to meet the Council of Economic Advisers and talk to the Reagan administration about oil prices, the tension in the Gulf, and our joint commitment to bear down on inflation. Everybody was terrified of the Iranians. The Gulf states and the
