not been able to maintain a united Cabinet. This damages the proper pursuit of British self-interest in Europe.’ Second, and perhaps most important, polls showed that he was the alternative leader best placed to rebuild Tory support and win the next election. Third, he promised an immediate review of the poll tax. At this stage he did not promise to abolish it: the undertaking merely to look at it again was designed to attract both those who still believed in the principle and those who thought the only possible result of a review would be to scrap it entirely.28 But he was careful not to repudiate Mrs Thatcher’s record entirely. On the contrary he claimed with some justice to have been ‘at the leading edge of Thatcherism’ for the past ten years. His resignation from the Cabinet in 1986 had seemed to be a storm in a teacup at the time – but his criticism of her handling of Cabinet had subsequently been corroborated by Lawson and Howe. Finally, he was a charismatic politician of undoubted Prime Ministerial calibre who had scrupulously refrained from open disloyalty over the past four years, while assiduously cultivating the constituencies and anxious MPs. Thus he was in every way a serious candidate and difficult for her to disparage.
In common with most political commentators, Mrs Thatcher did not really think it conceivable that a Prime Minister in possession of a good majority could be thrown out between elections by her own party. Though she had always known that she had enemies who would be glad to see the back of her, she took it for granted that her senior colleagues and her appointees in the party organisation would rally round to ensure that the challenge was seen off as it had been in 1989. In the event those she charged with running her campaign made a very poor fist of the job.
With hindsight she recognised that her insistence on going to Paris, which took her out of the country for the last two days of the campaign and the day of the ballot, was a mistake. It was not as if the CSCE was actually an important event. There was one symbolic treaty to be signed, cutting the levels of conventional forces; but it was more in the nature of an international celebration of the ending of the Cold War. President Bush, President Gorbachev, Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand were all going to be there, so Mrs Thatcher naturally wanted to be there too, to take her share of the credit. In truth it set the seal most appropriately on her premiership: but that was not her intention. By going to Paris she sent a signal that she was more interested in strutting the world stage than in meeting the worries of her troops at Westminster. She thought it was more important for her to be seen doing her job than grubbing for votes; for the same reason she spent the Friday before the poll in Northern Ireland. But this was not the message the party wanted to hear. ‘The plaudits are abroad,’ Kenneth Baker warned her, ‘but the votes are back home.’29 Heseltine by contrast, as Alan Clark noted, was working the Members’ Lobby and the tea rooms every day.
Fundamentally, the very fact that the Prime Minister’s supporters, with or without her presence, could not put together a decent campaign showed that she had lost the support of the central core of the parliamentary party. The necessary level of enthusiasm simply was not there. Those MPs who were neither passionately for her nor passionately against were listening to their constituencies. When George Walden consulted his local party in Buckingham, the show of hands was for loyalty. But in private three-quarters of those who said they supported her told him it was time for her to go, and he suspects this was typical.30 Ironically Mrs Thatcher herself had articulated the clinching argument. Replying to Kinnock and Ashdown at Prime Minister’s Questions the previous autumn, she had asserted that ‘the country’s best long-term interests consist of keeping those who are in opposition there in perpetuity’.31 It was precisely to ensure this that a large minority of Tory MPs thought that Mrs Thatcher should be replaced. Moreover, they were right: with a new Prime Minister, Labour was kept in opposition – if not in perpetuity, at least for another seven years.
With even Tory newspapers increasingly doubtful whether she could – or should – survive, there was an unmistakable whiff of defeat in the air even before the vote. Douglas Hurd added to it by failing to deny categorically that he might stand himself. ‘Against her, no,’ he told an interviewer, thus betraying that he recognised at least the possibility of a second ballot.32 Willie Whitelaw issued a statement of support but told Wyatt that the whole thing was ‘absolutely ghastly’. He believed that Mrs Thatcher should win, but he was afraid she would not win by enough. If it came to a second ballot he might have to advise her to stand down. ‘Whatever happens, we can’t have her humbled. But then she is wise enough to know that.’33 John Major, nursing an infected wisdom tooth away from the snake pit of Westminster, thought that she would probably scrape through; but Jeffrey Archer, who came on Monday to tell him the gossip, told him that her chances were ‘bleak’. Major’s phone kept ringing with colleagues wanting him to be ready to stand if she did not win well enough.34
In Paris on Monday morning Mrs Thatcher had breakfast with George Bush at the American Embassy, followed by a joint press conference, mainly about the Gulf. She attended the first plenary session of the conference and emerged to give another press conference at the British Embassy, hailing the signing of what she called ‘the biggest international disarmament agreement since the end of the last World War’ and brushing off questions about the leadership. 35 After lunch with the other leaders at the Elysee Palace – at which her old adversary Helmut Kohl was particularly supportive – she made her own speech at the conference, confessing that she had initially been sceptical about the Helsinki process, but admitting that with the arrival of Gorbachev in the Kremlin it had worked in the end and hoping that the CSCE would provide a forum for continuing progress on establishing human rights in the old Soviet empire.36 On Tuesday, while Tory MPs were voting in the House of Commons, she had talks with Gorbachev, Mitterrand and the President of Turkey and lunch with her favourite European leader, the Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers. The conference finished for the day around 4.30 p.m., and she returned to the British Embassy to await the result.
Back in London a meeting rather oddly composed of her campaign team plus party officials had drawn up alternative forms of words for her to use whatever the figures. Obviously if she won handsomely, or lost absolutely, there was no problem: discussion centred on what she should say if – as seemed increasingly likely – she led, but without the necessary margin to win on the first ballot. According to the rules she had to gain not only a simple majority (187) but a margin of 15 per cent of all those entitled to vote – that is fifty-six votes. In the event of her falling short, Norman Tebbit wanted her to make a clear commitment to fight on. Baker thought she should say she must consult her colleagues. It was John Wakeham who proposed the compromise formula that she should declare her ‘intention’ to contest a second ballot. Mrs Thatcher accepted this advice, so that when the result came through she had her response ready.
Waiting in Peter Morrison’s room at the embassy – Morrison (her current PPS) had flown over to be with her for the result – she sat at the dressing table with her back to the company, displaying ‘an inordinate calm’.37 Charles Powell sat on the bed. Morrison, Bernard Ingham, Cynthia Crawford (her dresser), the deputy Chief Whip and the British Ambassador in Paris were also present.Around 6.20 p.m. Tim Renton (the Chief Whip) rang from London. Morrison answered, wrote down the figures and gave them to Mrs Thatcher. ‘Not, I am afraid, as good as we had hoped.’ (Powell, typically, had his own line and had got the news half a minute earlier: behind Mrs Thatcher’s back he gave a thumbs down.) She had only 204 votes to Heseltine’s 152, with sixteen void or spoiled ballots: four votes short of the margin needed. She received the news calmly and after checking with Hurd that he and Major would still support her, immediately marched downstairs and out into the courtyard to give her predetermined response to the waiting press. Dramatically interrupting John Sergeant’s report for the BBC’s
I am naturally very pleased that I got more than half of the Parliamentary party and disappointed that it’s not
Despite her reflex defiance, both Powell and Ingham believe that those around her, and probably Mrs Thatcher herself, knew in their hearts that she was finished.39 So, certainly, did Denis. The first thing she did on coming back into the embassy was to ring him. ‘Denis was fabulous,’ Carol remembered. ‘“Congratulations, Sweetie-Pie, you’ve won; it’s just the rules,” he said, as tears trickled down his face. He was crying for her, not for himself.’ But when he put down the phone he turned to the friend who was with him and said: ‘We’ve had it. We’re out.’40
