resignation statement, while Andrew Turnbull, her private secretary rang the Governor of the Bank and others to give them advance warning of her decision.
As she always did before a big decision, she slept on it – briefly – before committing herself. At 7.30 she asked Turnbull to arrange another audience with the Queen. Then at 9.00 she chaired her final Cabinet. It was an intensely awkward occasion. She began by reading out her prepared statement, which was a model of dignified euphemism:
Having consulted widely among colleagues, I have concluded that the unity of the party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better served if I stood down to enable Cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership. I should like to thank all those in Cabinet and outside who have given me such dedicated support.61
Twice she almost broke down, but she rejected Parkinson’s suggestion that the Lord Chancellor should read it for her. After embarrassed tributes from several ministers, she then expanded on her statement by emphasising the importance of the Cabinet now uniting to defeat Heseltine and protect her legacy. Insisting that she could handle business but not sympathy, she recovered her composure to conduct the rest of the meeting in her usual brisk manner. After a short coffee break she reported on her latest talks with Bush and Gorbachev in Paris, and it was agreed to send another armoured brigade to the Gulf.
The announcement of Mrs Thatcher’s withdrawal from the contest was made at 9.25 a.m. (during the Cabinet’s coffee break), though of course she remained Prime Minister until the party had elected her successor. The news, though not unexpected at Westminster, evoked extraordinary scenes of jubilation and disbelief among the public: she had been there so long that her departure was hard to comprehend.
Last rites
Even in defeat Mrs Thatcher still had a last bravura performance up her sleeve. Another leader might have chosen to let someone else answer Labour’s ‘no confidence’ motion. On the contrary, she saw it as a last opportunity to vindicate her record. Even as her position crumbled the previous evening, she had not stopped working on her speech for the next day: never had her dedication been more impressive or her power of concentration more extraordinary. She was up before dawn to carry on crafting it. ‘Each sentence,’ she wrote in her memoirs, ‘was my testimony at the Bar of History.’62
After Prime Minister’s Questions – where she was given a fairly gentle ride – and a typically ungenerous speech by Kinnock, when a word of sympathy might have disarmed her, she started her speech by reminding the House of Nicholas Henderson’s gloomy 1979 dispatch describing Britain’s economic failure and loss of influence in the world since 1945. ‘Conservative government has changed all that,’ she boasted. ‘Once again, Britain stands tall in the councils of Europe and of the world, and our policies have brought unparalleled prosperity to our citizens at home.’ Once the interventions started she really got into her stride; and by the time she came on to defending her record in Europe she was ready to demolish Kinnock one last time. He did not know whether he was in favour of the single currency or not, she jeered, because ‘he does not even know what it means’. When the Labour left- winger Denis Skinner suggested that she should become Governor of the European Bank she seized on the notion with delight. ‘
From this moment, she had the House in the palm of her hand. A Eurosceptic Tory called out, ‘Cancel it. You can wipe the floor with these people.’ She went on to expound her vision of ‘a free and open Britain in a free and open Europe… in tune with the deepest instincts of the British people’, took credit for winning the Cold War, and ended with the Gulf, comparing it with the Falklands. Her last words were the apotheosis of the Iron Lady:
There is something else which one feels. That is a sense of this country’s destiny: the centuries of history and experience which ensure that, when principles have to be defended, when good has to be upheld and when evil has to be overcome, Britain will take up arms. It is because we on this side have never flinched from difficult decisions that this House and this country can have confidence in this Government today.63
It was an astonishing performance, a parliamentary occasion to equal – or, rather, trump – Howe’s speech, which had precipitated the whole landslide just nine days earlier, never to be forgotten by anyone who was present in the House or watched on television. The Tory benches cheered wildly, wondering if they had made a dreadful mistake.
At the end of the debate Baker had a drink with her in her room. ‘She was still resilient and looked as if she had freshly stepped off the boat after a great tour.’64 She was still angry about what her own party had done to her. ‘They’ve done what the Labour party didn’t manage to do in three elections,’ she told Carol. But for the moment she was still on a high. ‘Carol, I think my place in history is assured.’65
Nominations for the second ballot had already closed.To maximise the anti-Heseltine vote, and avoid the appearance of a Cabinet stitch-up, it was decided that both Hurd and Major should stand, thus giving Tory MPs what many had been demanding: a wider choice. Hurd, the older and much more experienced man, was the safe pair of hands. Major was thirteen years younger and an unknown quantity. He had risen with astonishing speed and seemed to owe his career entirely to Mrs Thatcher’s patronage. But the fact that he was her protege made it natural for those who felt guilty at ditching her to make amends by supporting him, though anyone who knew him at all well knew he was not a Thatcherite. ‘Many will vote for him thinking he is on the right wing,’ Willie Whitelaw correctly predicted. ‘They’ll be disappointed and soon find out that he isn’t.’66 Mrs Thatcher already had doubts herself, and initially declared that she would not endorse any candidate; but this was quickly forgotten, and over the weekend she did more canvassing for Major – mainly by telephone – than she had ever done for herself. She told them – and tried to believe it herself – that the best way of preserving her legacy was to support Major. Though she recognised that Hurd had been loyal, she had never really trusted him; more than Heseltine in some ways, he represented everything in the party that she had striven to reject, as she explained to Wyatt:
John Major is someone who has fought his way up from the bottom and is far more in tune with the skilled and ambitious and worthwhile working classes than Douglas Hurd is.67
The short campaign was exceptionally gentlemanly, and, once the momentum had swung behind Major, the result was never in doubt. Heseltine had always known that his chance would have gone the moment Mrs Thatcher withdrew, and so it proved. The result of the voting on 27 November gave Major 185 votes to Heseltine’s 131 and Hurd’s 56. Though strictly speaking Major was still two votes short of an absolute majority, both Heseltine and Hurd immediately withdrew, leaving Major the clear winner – with, as Mrs Thatcher reflected wryly, nineteen votes fewer than she had won seven days earlier. Nevertheless it was the result she had campaigned for, so as soon as Hurd and Heseltine had made their statements she burst through the connecting door to Number Eleven to congratulate her successor. ‘It’s everything I’ve dreamt of for such a long time,’ she gushed. ‘The future is assured.’68 She wanted to go outside with Major while he spoke to the media, but was persuaded that she must let him have his moment of glory alone. She was photographed peeping sadly from an upstairs window while Major made his statement and answered questions. This was the moment when the reality of her loss of office must have hit her.
She had spent the previous few days packing up and holding farewell parties for her staff and supporters. It was for just this eventuality that she and Denis had bought a house in Dulwich in 1986, so at least she had somewhere to go; and the housewife in her was good at the business of packing and clearing up. So long as she was busy she had no time to grieve.
Margaret and Denis went to Chequers for the last time for the weekend, attended church on Sunday morning and were heartbroken to leave the country home they had made good use of for the past eleven years. On Monday she paid a short visit to thank the workers at Central Office. She had been ‘very, very thrilled’, she
