ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Is Mrs T the greatest living Briton?

In this week's Spectator Fraser Nelson offers his readers a funny little insight into 'Operation Humanise Gordon Brown':

"It is rumoured that his aides have littered little ‘smiley’ stickers throughout his paperwork, and inside his car, reminding him to grin at every occasion."

But as, I think, William Hague has said: Brown is learning how to smile but not when to smile.  In yesterday's cliche-laden acceptance speech Labour's great clunking fist grinned at nearly all of the wrong times.  One political leader who did not have smiley faces in her paperwork was Margaret Thatcher.

In today's Sun, Trevor Kavanagh makes the case for Margaret Thatcher to win ITV1's search for the Greatest Living Briton.  Here are some highlights from his article:

"17 years after she left Downing Street, her name is still invoked with awe by every rising politician across Europe.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel and new French President Nicolas Sarkozy are both hailed as the new Margaret Thatcher."

"Her reforms turned Britain painfully but triumphantly from the “Sick Man of Europe” into one of the world’s strongest economies.  They ended the tyranny of militants and Marxists such as Arthur Scargill, who tried to destroy her elected government.  She gave union members a choice on whether or not to strike — and mostly they didn’t. She gave council house tenants the chance to buy their own home — and overwhelmingly they did... We take these things for granted today. Labour would like to give the impression they nodded along with approval.  But they opposed her every inch of the way — because they loathed everything she stood for.  The fact is that if Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or Neil Kinnock had their way, we would still be at the mercy of union militants."

"I travelled with her as she broke new frontiers around the world.  She was the first foreign leader to visit parts of the Communist world — at the invitation of leaders who gained kudos from her presence at their side.  She can claim credit for standing up to the Soviet Union and, along with US President Ronald Reagan, helping to bring down the Iron Curtain.  Russians queued for a glimpse of her as she dazzled leaders including Mikhail Gorbachev."

"Political journalists knew where she stood before she opened her mouth. She was straight as a gun barrel."

Related link: Mrs T is top PM says BBC's History magazine

In office but not in power

Last week Sam Coates and I attended the UK launch of John O'Sullivan's new book - The President, The Pope and The Prime Minister.  Margaret Thatcher was at the reception (as my rather inadequate snap of the great lady and Sam shows).  She appeared to be in excellent health and joined guests that included Bruce Anderson, Iain Dale, Alan Duncan, Robin Harris, Allister Heath, Peter Hitchens, Lord Lamont, Fraser Nelson and Peregrine Worsthorne.

I started to read the book over the weekend and will write a full review in due course.  But a great truth appears on page four that I had to share:

"Though [the liberal left] sometimes lost the power of government through election defeats, they and their colleagues almost never lost power in the bureaucracy, the courts, the universities, the media, the charitable sector, and the great cultural institutions."

I think that's still true today and why the work of groups like the New Culture Forum and the Centre for Social Justice are so important.  It has been the great mistake and weakness of conservatism that we allowed liberals their long, largely unchallenged march through the institutions.  As Norman Lamont might say: Even when we're in office, we're hardly in power.

BUY: The President, the Pope and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World

'Falklands was most important act of Margaret Thatcher's premiership'

"Had [Thatcher] lost the Falklands, it is doubtful she would have wished to continue. Her departure would have halted and probably reversed the economic reforms responsible for Britain's subsequent economic revival... Lady Thatcher was never temperamentally interested in reflecting on history. She preferred to make it. But she understood then, and she understands now, that the Falklands War was the most important episode of her premiership. Of course, at one level, Max Hastings, who similarly made his name in it, is right to call the Falklands a "damnably silly conflict". Britain was fighting a lonely struggle thousands of miles away from its shores for aims that made little or no sense to anyone else. But for that very reason it was of transforming intensity.  Unlike New Labour's wars, it was a national struggle for British honour and interests. This anniversary is a reminder that decisive leadership is always at some stage most likely to involve iron and blood."

That's the conclusion of an article by former Downing Street adviser Robin Harris in today's Independent on Sunday.

***
William Hague is currently visiting the Falklands and producing a short video diary for ConservativeHome.com.

Labour MP wants Thatcher statue removed

Publicity-hungry Labour MP Stephen Hepburn has put down this Early Day Motion:

"That this House recalls the cruel and divisive reign of Margaret Thatcher and demands that the statue be removed from the Members' Lobby until such time as its erection has been approved by a vote in the House."

One thing we can be sure of is that Parliament won't even think of erecting a monument to the achievements of Mr Hepburn.

Related link: The bronze lady.

Evening update: Greg Hands MP has suggested an amendment to the EDM. Insert the following after "That this House recalls"...

"the great achievements of Baroness Thatcher in changing Britain for the better; including curbing excessive trades union powers, standing up to naked aggression in the Falklands, extending popular capitalism, giving millions of Britons the chance of home ownership, and helping to win freedom for millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe, and believes that an impressive statue in members lobby is a fitting tribute to Britain's first female Prime Minister."

The bronze lady

Marking yesterday's historic unveiling of the bronze statue to Margaret Thatcher in the Members' Lobby of the House of Commons, the Daily Mail's Stephen Glover pays tribute to all that she achieved for Britain:

"Inflation over 20 per cent in some years; trades union power dominant; the stockmarket flat for many years; strikes everywhere; above all, despair. Britain really was a joke, and when one went abroad, in America or on the Continent, people would come up to express their sympathy. The idea of relentless economic decline was stamped into our national psyche. Many so-called intellectuals said that the only realistic objective of government was to 'manage decline'.  Margaret Thatcher rescued us from much of this. She took on the over-mighty trades unions and faced down the striking miners. She privatised many ludicrously inefficient nation-alised industries that were run solely for the benefit of their employees. She liberalised foreign exchange restrictions, and slashed income tax, so that almost for the first time since the war, entrepreneurs sprang up, and hard work and enterprise were rewarded. In the City, she presided over 'Big Bang,' as a result of which London is now overtaking New York — an inconceivable prospect 25 years ago — as the world's foremost financial centre...

She did revive Britain. She scrapped the language of economic decline. She made us believe that success was possible. Without the economic reforms of Thatcherism, there would have been no New Labour, and certainly no Gordon Brown presiding benignly over a golden economic period which, however, he threatens by ever-creeping taxation and rising public expenditure...

Her legacy is all around us; Tony Blair's is chiefly in Iraq. He may have stayed away last night, as the seven-and-a-half foot statue of Lady Thatcher was unveiled, but one day, if as a plain MP he should ever pass through the Members' Lobby, he will see the statue towering above him.  Here she has been placed in the company of Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and Clement Attlee — all, in their ways, great men, and all of them, like Margaret Thatcher, prime ministers who left a legacy to be proud of. With such people, at least, she has received her due."

Talking to one MP last night he noticed how her statue stands in front of a much smaller bust of Ted Heath.  He still lives in her shadow - even in death.  The Great Sulk can continue.

Related link: Iain Dale on the unveiling.

Mrs T is top PM says BBC's History Magazine

Historian Francis Beckett has decided that Margaret Thatcher is the most effective Prime Minister of the 20th century.  Mr Beckett, who authored a highly critical biography of Mrs Thatcher, put the Iron Lady in the same '5 out of 5' category as Clement Atlee.  They were judged to have (1) a clear idea of what they wanted to achieve in office, and (2) they went on to deliver what they wanted to achieve.

Edward Heath ends up ahead of Winston Churchill in the second tier of Prime Ministers.  But succeeding in taking Britain into the European Economic Community can hardly equal keeping Britain out of a Europe run by Hitler?

Few Tories will have a problem with Tony Blair's mid-table ranking.  Tony Blair is at the bottom of the '3 out of 5' grouping of twentieth century PMs.

Three other Tories - John Major, Anthony Eden and Neville Chamberlain - sit at the bottom of Beckett's list.

Should Mrs T receive a state funeral?

ToryDiary will return to today's terror plot tomorrow... in the meantime it would be good to receive readers' opinion on whether or not Baroness Thatcher should be honoured with a state funeral.  I hope, of course, that the whole question will be academic for a good number of years and there is something a little inappropriate in discussing the issue.  We are discussing the issue because Downing Street has written to a Labour MP to veto the idea of a state funeral.

Yesterday's Daily Telegraph slammed Downing Street's intervention as "very bad taste".  Agreeing that it's premmature to be conclusive about the idea of a state funeral, Stephen Glover, writing in today's Mail, nonetheless thinks Mrs T deserves an honour that hasn't been bestowed on a peacetime Prime Minister since the nineteenth century:

"There are millions of British people — not just Tories — who will believe that Margaret Thatcher’s political achievements should be honoured when the time comes.   Not many of us who can remember the 1970s would want to go back to them. This determined, stubborn, sometimes maddening and, above all, brave woman did make a big difference to our history. In most respects it has been a good one.  Shelve the issue for the time being. There should be no unseemly public argument about Margaret Thatcher’s funeral arrangements. But, when the time comes, we must give her what she deserves."

I was interviewed on Radio 2 this afternoon and argued that it was important to establish whether Mrs Thatcher actually wanted a state funeral but given her worldwide reputation - as an iconic standard bearer for British values and for democracy - Britain should certainly be open to honouring her in this way.

Comparing the end of Blair to the end of Thatcher

On Radio 4 this morning, Jim Naughtie presented How to Topple a Prime Minister.  It was a reflection on the end of the Thatcher premiership and included interviews with Ken Clarke, Geoffrey Howe, Kenneth Baker and John Wakeham.  The programme looked for comparisons with then and the looming end of Tony Blair's own premiership.  The graphic below summarises some of the programme's observations and adds a few of ConservativeHome's own.

Margaret Thatcher in hospital overnight

BBCi: "Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher has been taken to hospital after "feeling faint", the Tory party says.  Lady Thatcher, in Downing Street from 1979 to 1990, has suffered from frailer health in recent years but recently held a lavish 80th birthday party.  She will stay overnight at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital but is expected to return home on Thursday.  Following some minor strokes, she has restricted the number of speaking engagements she undertakes."