Back in 2017, when now-National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell was blabbering on about Brexit every ten minutes, he sat down with Civil Service World to reflect on his years as a ‘negotiator’ in the 80s and 90s. Here he is claiming China were easier to deal with than Thatcher when handing over Hong Kong…
“My mentor when I was doing the Hong Kong negotiation back in the early 1980s was Sir Percy Cradock. He said Cradock’s First Law of Diplomacy is the hardest negotiations are on your own side. When we were doing the Hong Kong negotiations his biggest challenge was negotiating with Mrs Thatcher, negotiating with ExCo, the executive council in Hong Kong. The Chinese were relatively easy by comparison.”
He goes on to cite Gerry Adams as making a similar claim, that “negotiating with your own band is always the hardest thing to do”. Percy Cradock – who served as British Ambassador to China from 1978 to 1983 – was eventually sacked by John Major in 1992 for being too conciliatory towards Beijing. His protégé Powell appears to have learned some lessons…
On 11 February 1975 Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party. The former education secretary won 47.1% of the vote compared to Ted Heath’s 43.1% in the first ballot…
Mrs T. won every subsequent general election she fought until she was ousted in 1990. To celebrate the Tories have sent an email to all of their members flogging a Thatcher-themed mug for £25. They include in their plea some Kemi messaging:
“Fifty years ago, on January 20th 1975, Margaret Thatcher announced her candidacy for Leader of the Conservative Party.
She promised to deal with the mistakes of the previous Government.
She didn’t rush to policy announcements, but worked diligently to build a detailed vision for the future of our country.
As Kemi is doing for us today.
So please help power the renewal and put our Party in the best shape to change Britain for the better at the next elections, just as Margaret Thatcher did all those years ago.”
At Mrs Thatcher’s first conference speech in October of that year she began to identify what she identified as pillars of recovery: restoring profits, reversing Labour education reforms, and dismantling Barbara Castle’s NHS pay beds phase out. If it walks like a policy and quacks like a policy…
The next year Conservative Central Office distributed the landmark policy statement called “The Right Approach” which set out in some significant detail what Thatcher was proposing to do if she was in power. YouGov’s latest polling this morning has the Tories trailing in third place on 21 points behind an ascendant Reform, which sits in first place at 26. Tempora mutantur…
After trashing the gilt market, the job market, the pound and now retail sales, Reeves is still limping on, insisting her critics “won’t get me down”. Instead, she hilariously compared herself to Margaret Thatcher…
Speaking on the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast, Reeves declared she’s happy to be called the “Iron Lady,” heaping praise on Thatcher for “taking what she thought were the right decisions” and “taking on her critics,” explaining that she’s doing the same. Clearly she skipped a few chapters in the history books…
Meanwhile in her bid to show just how ‘frugal’ she is in government, she proudly revealed she brings packed lunches to the office—saving leftover pastries from breakfast. Shame she’s not as careful with taxpayers’ money…
Another week, another brutal poll for Keir Starmer. This time, a survey by More in Common asked the public to name their favourite modern Prime Minister. Spoiler: it’s not Starmer…
Margaret Thatcher topped the list with 33% of the vote, followed by Tony Blair at 20%. Starmer got a paltry 4% overall. Even within his own party, he fared little better—just 9% of Labour voters called him their favourite. To add insult to injury, 14% of Labour supporters picked Thatcher as their favourite Prime Minister. It’s a tough day in office when Labour voters prefer the Tory icon over their current leader…
Guido fondly remembers when Starmer praised Thatcher for effecting “meaningful change” and “setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism”. Looks like his voters agree…
Starmer’s biographer Tom Baldwin says that the PM has removed the picture of Margaret Thatcher from the… Margaret Thatcher room. Who’s going to go up in her place – Arthur Scargill?
Gordon Brown put the painting of Mrs Thatcher up in 2007 and it has been there ever since. Either Guido was hallucinating or he remembers Keir lavishing praise on the Iron Lady a mere ten months ago, weathering a storm of criticism from his socialist colleagues:
“Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.“
Looks like he’s flopped on that too. Guido has added it to his rolling list of Labour U-turns…
Maybe he’s embarrassed that he is a man and his party is the only major one to never have elected a woman as its leader. 16,555 days behind the Tories and counting…
Douglas Alexander – a friend of Starmer’s – was asked on Sky News if the PM will be in post at the next election. He wasn’t so sure himself:
“I think he will. There are no certainties but of course I think he will lead and I think he should because, frankly, on the biggest call in this parliament he’s exercised the right judgment, which is to keep us out of someone else’s war.”
