Margaret thatcher

Last night, George Osborne interviewed Charles Moore to mark the publication of the second volume of Charles’s magisterial biography of Margaret Thatcher. You can watch the whole thing on the Policy Exchange website but one of the most striking things about the event, apart from Charles’s subtle needling of the Chancellor, was the questions that Osborne felt able to ask. He raised the issue of Thatcher’s legacy for the Tories in the north and Scotland, the poll tax and the question of when she should have gone. Even a few years ago asking these questions would have prompted a row, or at least some disquiet in the audience which had

At a large Tory breakfast meeting that David Cameron spoke to recently, the tables were named after all of the Conservative premiers of the past: the good, the bad and Ted Heath. So there were the Lord Salisbury, Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher tables, for example. (I was delighted to be on the Winston Churchill table; the people on the Neville Chamberlain one looked suitably ill-favoured.) As Cameron — who was sat at the David Cameron table, appropriately enough — looked around the huge room that morning, he could be forgiven for wondering where he will wind up in the pantheon of past premiers. For as Cameron nears his tenth

The waiting is over – the next volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher has, at last, been published. It follows the central, triumphal years of her premiership, from the Falklands to the 1987 election. Some of it has been serialised in the Sunday Telegraph today, with more in the Telegraph tomorrow. But if you’re at the Tory Party conference then do join Charles discussing the book with Andrew Neil at the Midland Hotel at 6pm– tickets are just £12, and are selling fast. There are just a few left: you can book them here. And there will be early copies of the book fro sale, too, as well

At a large Tory breakfast meeting that David Cameron spoke to recently, the tables were named after all of the Conservative premiers of the past: the good, the bad and Ted Heath. So there were the Lord Salisbury, Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher tables, for example. (I was delighted to be on the Winston Churchill table; the people on the Neville Chamberlain one looked suitably ill-favoured.) As Cameron — who was sat at the David Cameron table, appropriately enough — looked around the huge room that morning, he could be forgiven for wondering where he will wind up in the pantheon of past premiers. For as Cameron nears his tenth

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Stephen Bush discuss the upcoming Labour party conference” startat=1650] Listen [/audioplayer]Five years ago this Saturday, Ed Miliband was crowned Labour leader. Three days later, he had to deliver his first conference speech in that role. It was a distinctly underwhelming address. Miliband was overshadowed by his brother, who ticked Harriet Harman off for clapping. To try to give its new leader a better start this time round, Labour decided to announce the result of its leadership contest a fortnight before the party conference. But two weeks has been nowhere near enough time for Labour to come to terms with what has happened. The Parliamentary Labour

Banknotes, again. Now it’s America’s turn to suffer the unintended consequences of an ill-implemented campaign to inject some XX chromosomes into currency. In June, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that he was knocking founding father Alexander Hamilton, a self-made, illegitimate boy from the West Indies, off the $10 bill. There’s a nationwide hunt for a woman whose image could replace him: in this week’s Republican debate, Jeb Bush suggested Margaret Thatcher. You can even tweet your own suggestions to the Treasury, with the hashtag #TheNew10. Now, I’m pretty keen on Margaret Thatcher. (If Jeremy Corbyn wants to end the scourge of personal abuse in politics, he could talk to her

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thedeathoftheleft/media.mp3″ title=”Nick Cohen and Fraser Nelson discuss the death of the left” startat=32] Listen [/audioplayer]‘Tory, Tory, Tory. You’re a Tory.’ The level of hatred directed by the Corbyn left at Labour people who have fought Tories all their lives is as menacing as it is ridiculous. If you are a woman, you face misogyny. Kate Godfrey, the centrist Labour candidate in Stafford, told the Times she had received death threats and pornographic hate mail after challenging her local left. If you are a man, you are condemned in language not heard since the fall of Marxist Leninism. ‘This pathetic small-minded jealousy of the anti-democratic bourgeois shows them up for

According to some of the more far-left members of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman is a Tory. The somewhat surprising claim came after she told her party to abstain on the Tories’ Welfare Bill, leading 48 MPs to break whip and vote against it. However, seemingly keen to silence the naysayers — in an interview with the Guardian — Harman, who has three children with Jack Dromey, has given an account of the lengths she has gone to to avoid socialising with Tories. The acting Leader of the Labour Party says that she once hid in a side corridor to prevent Margaret Thatcher — who she likens to a witch — from

Mr Corbyn has a beard. If he becomes leader, he will be the first bearded leader of any main party since Keir Hardie. The beard as a fashion item is now back, generally in shaped and even waxed form. But Mr Corbyn’s one owes nothing to fashion. It is a 1960s political beard, already obsolete when he first brought it into the House of Commons in 1983. Like Lord Hailsham who, as Mrs Thatcher’s Lord Chancellor, continued to wear a bowler hat long after it had disappeared from everything but hunt puppy shows, Orange parades and A Clockwork Orange, Mr Corbyn is undaunted by the passage of time. I must try not

‘Lobbying,’ writes William Waldegrave in this extraordinary memoir, ‘takes many forms.’ But he has surely reported a variant hitherto unrecorded in the annals of politics. The Cardinal Archbishop of Cardiff (‘splendidly robed and well supported by priests and other attendants’) had come to lobby him (then an education minister) against the closure of a Catholic teacher-training college. After discussion the archbishop suggested their respective entourages leave the room. Face to face and alone with Waldegrave, the archbishop told him he had a distinguished 16th-century ancestor, who was a candidate for beatification. The unspoken implication was left hanging. ‘The Roman Catholic college duly closed,’ adds Waldegrave, ‘and I heard no more

I know that the comments beneath online newspaper pieces aren’t exactly where you go if you want sane, balanced opinion, but the forum which followed the Guardian’s news story about Tony Blair’s speech yesterday nevertheless took me aback. Appropriately enough, there were 666 comments when I read them. And how many had anything positive to say about the former Prime Minister?  I counted one, possibly two, if you count calling him a ‘charismatic commentator’ before saying you think he is out of touch. It has been clear since around 2002 that Blair has been seen on the left as a generally negatively influence, but is there really no-one among Labour’s grassroots

My first reaction on hearing of Margaret Thatcher’s death in 2013 was: ‘Great — now my autograph from her will go up in value.’ This wasn’t callous. It was a simple application of demand and supply. As a child of the 1980s I had learned my lesson well. The Lady wouldn’t have objected to me viewing her signature as a pension plan. Indeed, it’s what she would have wanted. How many Caribbean villas, then, should I be thinking of buying? Because this is no ordinary autograph. I asked Mrs T. (as she then still was) to write out ‘There is no such thing as society’ and sign it. She embellished