The Real Iron Lady (4 page)

During a terrible day in the House of Commons for Neil Kinnock, I watched as she destroyed him by simply picking away at the facts. Then having won the argument against him, she turned witheringly to tell the House, ‘I fear the Right Honourable Gentleman is not the master of his brief!' As very many people, not just in the opposition parties, or the media, but in her own Cabinet, government and party, were to learn, it was always a good idea to master your brief, and to master it to the letter, before confronting Margaret Thatcher.

She still prepared for parliamentary questions or international summits like a schoolgirl preparing for an exam. She was contemptuous of opponents, colleagues or fellow heads of government who had stinted their homework. But however much they had done, she always expected to do more.

This was the period which established new expectations of prime ministership – what one might call the stretched premiership of late-twentieth-century Britain. In William Waldegrave's judgement, we had ‘not had such all-pervasive personal government since Churchill as a war leader: perhaps since Lloyd George as a war leader, since there were large areas of policy on the home front about which even Churchill did not much concern himself. There were no such areas under Mrs Thatcher.'

Her influence was deployed much more opportunistically and instinctively than we should have planned. But throughout Whitehall and Westminster her instinct, her thinking, her authority, was almost always present, making itself felt pervasively, tenaciously and effectively.

It came gradually to feel, as the months went by, as though the Prime Minister was present, unseen and unspeaking, at almost every meeting. The questions were always being asked, even if unspoken: how will this play at No. 10? What's the best way of getting the Prime Minister on side for that? And so on.

There was never a case of any note going to her that used three words where one was enough. I was expected to warn her of impending trouble, propose improvements to policy and to comment on briefings coming from my three Departments: Home Office, Environment and the Lord Chancellor. Other ministers and senior officials sent in material to No. 10. I was the cog that commented on everything relevant in my area if I felt it was necessary. How did Margaret receive her briefings from me and the Policy Unit members? Cartoon characterisation would have you believe it would be a brutal regime in No. 10 in which we all lived in constant fear of ‘handbagging'. This was not the case. Until Margaret Thatcher's mind was made up, she was not just open to new ideas and proposals, she welcomed them. She listened intently and read with great focus.

Life was made easier by two things: there was an atmosphere of encouragement and we knew Margaret's policy principles. I, and indeed the civil service, responded best because we knew the goals and the framework or targets with which to work. Consequently policy had to be tested, for example, by applying the questions such as: ‘Does the proposal produce value for money?'; ‘Is it in line with the manifesto?' (I had the manifesto on my desk all the time.); ‘Does it increase government control or reduce it?'; ‘Could the proposal be regarded as nannying?'

Policy briefings and other reports would frequently enter the red
boxes and in-trays of Ministers and stay there for far too long. With Margaret, you were always sure that papers put to her would be read speedily and marked assiduously. Her custom was to underline comments, and put ticks and crosses in the margin. There might be the occasional ‘NO' beside a comment. Happy were the moments when a tick and an ‘MT' inscription was put beside it. Things would then happen and sometimes very fast indeed. One proposal for example, that gained one of her ‘yes, do it' ticks became legislation in just three months. (It resulted in the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol etc.) Act of 1985.) This was at a time when the whole country had become appalled by the bad behaviour displayed at football matches. Margaret, with the proposal in front of her, and with strong support from Denis, saw to it that the legislative process was fast-tracked. When I told her a year later, ‘Prime Minister, this season there are a third fewer reported football crowd crimes thanks, it seems, to the introduction of CCTV and control of alcohol on the terraces,' I received another comment in the margin: ‘Excellent.'

I was not long back from the cash limits division in Denis Healey's Treasury when the Thatcher government came to power. The Winter of Discontent had ended, but the civil service had goose bumps at the prospect of the threatened cold winds. Cash limits had been central to the control of expenditure following the 25 per cent per annum inflation of 1975, and during the IMF crisis of 1976. But the appointment of Sir Derek Rayner of Marks and Spencer as Mrs Thatcher's part-time unpaid adviser on eliminating waste was widely seen as a last chance for the civil service. If Rayner failed, said my Permanent Secretary, Sir John Boreham, expect the next appointment to be a Genghis Khan.

Thatcher was determined, it was put to me, to tame the jungle of official statistics, and I was to be the lead statistician member of the team to do so. Twice I said ‘no' to the career-limiting appointment, finally to be drafted on the authority of the Head of the Home Civil Service, Sir Ian Bancroft. Other promising young civil servants were similarly chosen to carry out the Rayner ‘test drillings' of the value for money from typical departmental activities (known as scrutinies). They reported directly to their Secretaries of State with recommendations which, largely unheard of previously, carried the names of those responsible, which were produced to a tight timescale and which were not to be amended by the departmental hierarchy. This was ‘close up and personal' on a new scale.

It was during that first assignment that I realised that though Mrs Thatcher disliked the civil service, she appreciated individual civil servants and especially those whom she perceived were trying to change things for the better.

At the end of 1980, Rayner rescued my career by appointing me general manager of the scrutiny programme. I learned how to
make submissions that would stand a fair chance of gaining Mrs Thatcher's agreement. All but the most trivial would be read personally, and phrases that made an impact on her, for good or bad, would be underlined in felt pen. Short notes, in an unmistakeable, slightly elaborate handwriting, would instruct the relevant Private Secretary what was to be conveyed on her behalf. The skill, I soon discovered, was to keep things brief, to deploy evidence in support of the arguments and above all to use language which would resonate with her – stick to concrete examples and avoid the woolly abstractions so often encountered in ‘management speak'. There was another reason. All those who lead units for a Prime Minister must speak from time to time with the voice of their master, and the recipient must not be able to tell whether the words come directly out of his or her mouth, or are interpretations of what he or she would have said in the circumstances.

Evidence mattered, and we soon learned to deploy it effectively. ‘Give me an example', was a frequent response to a statement or suggestion. If satisfied, Mrs Thatcher would let the conversation move on, and then when least expected would return to probe again. ‘What you said about X was very interesting,' she would say. ‘Have you another example?' Success in her cross-examination depended upon having evidence in depth, and being able to deploy it as the discussion zigzagged forward. Thus, she ensured that she controlled the flow of argument and that you stayed focused.

At other times, such as opening the October 1985 seminar on management responsibilities for junior ministers, her deep belief that management in government mattered shone out, perhaps, in hindsight, at the risk of appearing patronising. ‘You have been appointed to get results, not just to hold office' and ‘Getting results out of the department is the mark of a minister in the driving seat' were part of her opening remarks. Few would have been persuaded but all would have registered the rules, and for those of us working to give effect to good management as a policy in its own right, to hear her say so unequivocally that our efforts were important and valued was inspirational. However, when she addressed a question to me, in front of everyone, to check if what a Permanent Secretary had just said was accurate, for me was somewhat fraught with danger!

It was through this combination of looking for the evidence first-hand, seeking the underlying causes and having a plan for practical action that working for Mrs Thatcher brought home to me the opportunities I had and the enduring loyalty I owed to her. It was a
five-year rollercoaster ride, at once exhilarating and frightening and never to be forgotten.