Working for Mrs Thatcher

A doctor providing geriatric care once told me of the damage Mrs Thatcher had done to the NHS. He used to employ a simple test to find out whether his elderly patients had become seriously gaga. He would ask them who the Prime Minister was: as their minds weakened so the only name they came up with was Winston Churchill. But after Mrs Thatcher had become Prime Minister even the most confused of his elderly patients gave the right answer. Now of course his test can work again. Right through until the middle of the next century, elderly people in nursing homes will be assuring polite young doctors that Mrs Thatcher is the Prime Minister.

I joined her Downing Street staff at the beginning of 1984 during the miners’ strike. Meetings with her on any subject would be interrupted by private secretaries dashing in as if they were messengers from one of Shakespeare’s history plays with reports that ‘Nottinghamshire is with us’, ‘Kent is rebellious’, or ‘Yorkshire is in turmoil’.