There is No Alternative (48 page)

“When you say ‘her increasingly high-handed treatment'—”

“Well, she used to
berate
Geoffrey Howe in cabinet—”

“When you say ‘berate'—”

“Well, just sort of slap him down or overrule him. She got very dismissive, in the end. Impatient. You know, after ten, eleven years in government, head of government when the military went to victories—she had the answers and wasn't really interested in listening to reservations.”

“What kind of language did she use?”

“She didn't use bad language, never used bad language. ‘Forceful' and ‘strident' are the sort of words that come to mind. She could behave—it was pretty embarrassing at times to listen to it, frankly. You know, that she could treat someone like that. Because it was bound to have an effect, really, bound to.”

Enter now Geoffrey Howe, who until this point has not figured largely in my story not because he was insignificant—he was Thatcher's first chancellor and her longest-serving cabinet minister—but because, honestly, he is boring. Mild-mannered. Bland. Uncon-frontational. In 1978, Labour Chancellor Denis Healey said that being challenged by Howe in debate was “like being savaged by a dead sheep.”

There is a sequel to this anecdote. When in 1983 Healey congratulated Howe upon his appointment as foreign secretary, Howe told the House that it was “like being nuzzled by an old ram.” A nice riposte. But think about that: Howe had been stewing over that insult and storing up that response for
five years
.

Nigel Lawson writes that Thatcher found Howe's “quiet, dogged manner intensely irritating. Increasingly, over the years, she felt compelled—to the acute embarrassment of everyone else present—to treat him as something halfway between a punchbag and a doormat . . . she went out of her way to humiliate him at every turn.”
²⁵⁷
When I spoke to Lawson, I asked him just why, exactly, Howe's manner irritated her so. “She bullied people who she thought were bully-able,” he said tersely. “Which is not a very attractive characteristic, but you know, nobody's perfect.”

Howe was not the only one she had bullied. The list of those she had aggrieved was long. Lawson, by this point, was among them, and so was her former defense secretary, Michael Heseltine. She had enemies everywhere. But she did not believe they would dare rise up against her.

Thatcher's popularity declined in 1989. Inflation was once again rising. She blamed Nigel Lawson. She claimed that her chancellor
had been following an economic policy in preparation for monetary union without her knowledge and against her wishes. The story does not reflect well on her. If he was doing this without her knowledge, she was not in control; if he was doing this against her wishes, she was not in command. In either case, she was not accepting responsibility.

At the Madrid European summit, Lawson and Howe threatened to resign unless Thatcher agreed, at a minimum, to state the circumstances under which she would join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Thatcher saw the Exchange Rate Mechanism as the precursor to monetary union. She capitulated to their ultimatum because she had no choice, but she took revenge. She demoted Howe to leader of the House—a position he rightly saw as ceremonial—and from then on permitted her economic advisor Alan Walters, a caustic Euroskeptic, to eclipse Lawson.

When Howe first rose to speak in his new, diminished capacity, Lawson recalled,

Lawson resigned from Thatcher's cabinet that October, stating—correctly—that Thatcher's reliance on Walters had undermined him.

Lawson's resignation came as a great shock to her. This in itself indicates that her uncanny political judgment had begun to fail her. Shortly after Lawson's resignation, Thatcher was interviewed
for ITV by Brian Walden. It is a remarkable exchange: It is clear that Thatcher is losing her grasp not only politically, but emotionally. It is the only interview I can recall watching in which Thatcher's interlocutor pulverizes her. She appears bewildered, off-balance, flustered, and insane.

In November 1989, Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by Anthony Meyer, an unknown backbencher. She defeated him handily, but it was now clear that the knives had been unsheathed. She did not seem to sense it. Asked by an interviewer where she stood, she replied, “In the lead, I am the Leader, I am Prime Minister. That is where I am and I shall just carry on as I have always carried on.” Did that mean she would go on ad infinitum? he asked. “No, no, no,” she said blithely. “I did not say ad infinitum—no-one can go on ad infinitum . . . One is, after all, finite.”
²⁶⁰

By the fall of 1990, the Conservative Party had come to see Thatcher as a liability. Europe was not the only reason for this. The introduction of the so-called Community Charge—a fixed-rate tax for local services—was intended to expose the wastefulness of Labour-controlled local governments. It replaced a tax pegged to the notional rental value of a taxpayer's house. Thatcher hoped that voters would at last realize how much the Labour councils were really spending and throw the bums out. But unsurprisingly, a tax that appeared to penalize the poor at exactly the same rates
as the rich was not well-received. In March, a demonstration in London against the poll tax turned into the worst riot seen in the city for a century. Millions refused to pay. Protestors resisted the bailiffs and disrupted the court hearings of the debtors. At Balliol—a very left-wing college—students were constantly organizing and marching against the poll tax. All through that autumn they were making banners and passing around leaflets and petitions. I watched this with puzzlement: It seemed to me that for a change they were right. The poll tax was insanity. I couldn't figure out what Thatcher was thinking.

Thatcher refused to compromise or change the tax.

The economy was headed toward recession. The Conservatives were trailing in the polls. The Conservative Party is not known for loyalty. In 1975 Thatcher herself had studied the omens, then challenged and vanquished Ted Heath.

“The most tearing blow,” Neil Kinnock recalls, “was the fact that we were 14, 16 points ahead on the day she went through the door. And an objective assessment of the reasons for her departure will take account of her arrogance, the distance that she developed between herself and her party, the poll tax—but really, what lit the fuse was that month after month after month we were way ahead in the opinion polls, and the Tories were starting to worry about their own security. Political security. So a group said, rightly, ‘If she stays there, we're going to lose the next election.' They were right about that.”