Margaret thatcher

Oh God, it’s happened again. Another evening where I’m surrounded by people I know personally or have interviewed, and I can’t remember a single name. Multiple blanks. It’s a sort of self-fulfilling nervous tic — a phobia, almost. We were at a fundraiser at our kids’ former school in north London. For some reason, lots of celebs send their children there, including Jonathan Ross. He once joked that it’s the only school in London with a permanent posse of paparazzi hanging around outside the gates. Anyway, a veteran actor with grandchildren there strolled over for a chat. After he’d wandered off, I looked at my wife in mute appeal. ‘Tom

One important staffing decision David Cameron took early in his premiership was to fill the post of Chief Mouser, which had been vacant since the demise of its previous occupant, Sybil, at the height of the global financial crisis. Defying their party’s commitment to lean government, the Conservatives made two appointments: Larry and Freya. These cats are the latest in a long line of Downing Street felines, stretching back at least to Churchill’s time in office. Incumbents often hold the role for a long time: Mrs Thatcher’s cat, Humphrey (allegedly named after a fictional civil servant with similar feline cunning), remained in office through the rest of her term, and

The brilliant Matthew Parris writes in his Times column today about Margaret Thatcher using the word ‘swamped’ in relation to immigration in 1978. We had been averaging 500-700 letters a week when, discussing immigration in a TV interview, Mrs Thatcher used the word “swamped”. In the following week she received about 5,000 letters, almost all in support, almost all reacting to that interview. I had to read them. We were swamped indeed: swamped by racist bilge. It’s the things people confide in you when they think you’re one of them that can be so revealing. But there is another part of this story that Matthew leaves out. On election night

If the European Commission had come to Britain demanding another £90 million because this country’s economy had performed better than expected, it would have been a political headache for David Cameron. The money would have been handed over and Ukip would have slapped it on to its election leaflets. But the Commission’s demand for £1.7 billion extra from Britain is so outrageous that it provides Cameron with a political opportunity. He can refuse to pay and hold up all other European business until the demand is dropped, rallying the country to his side as Margaret Thatcher did over the British rebate. One Cabinet Minister says excitedly of the row with

In a 1978 interview to mark her third year as leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher addressed public concerns with immigration, stating that ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped’. Goodness knows what word she would use to describe the situation we face today. Anyone who has knocked on doors or surveyed their constituents in recent years will tell you the public have had enough. Immigration into the UK is the number one concern to the British public and, in my judgment, a party that does not address it will not win. In 2003 427,000 people arrived in Britain. In the years that followed

It used to be said that loyalty was the Tory party’s secret weapon. But this supposed strength hasn’t been very apparent in recent years. Indeed, at times, it seems that the Tory party hasn’t quite recovered from the demons unleashed by Margaret Thatcher’s ouster twenty-odd years ago.   Douglas Carswell’s defection means that Westminster, when it is not panicking about the Scottish referendum, is chuntering about whether his move to Ukip is the harbinger of a bigger Tory split to come, one that The Spectator explores this week. Worryingly for the Tory loyalists, there are people on all sides of the party are preparing for this fight.  As one Tory

In 1975 Margaret Thatcher said in her ‘Free Society’ speech to the Conservative Party Conference: ‘Some Socialists seem to believe that people should be numbers in a state computer. We believe they should be individuals. We are all unequal. No one, thank heavens, is like anyone else, however much the Socialists may pretend otherwise. We believe that everyone has the right to be unequal but to us every human being is equally important.’ Mr S could not help but recall these fine words after an email arrived from the Labour Party asking him to enter chunks of personal data into its website, such as his postcode and date of birth,

It is a risky business for any serving Cabinet Minister to give a big picture political speech setting out their personal philosophy. It is all too easy for such a gesture to be seen as the start of a leadership bid. This was the fate that befell Theresa May when she made her big speech to the Conservative Home conference 15 months ago. But last week, George Osborne gave his own credo speech to the Centre for Policy Studies’ Thatcher conference last week. The address, delivered after dinner on the final night of the conference, was the fullest explanation yet of the Chancellor’s political philosophy. Osborne is far more of

If conservatives had an answer to Woodstock, it would resemble the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty held today by the Centre for Policy Studies. The lineup is stellar, and I’ve been here all day. General David Petraeus is one of the many guests and was asked what he’d do about the rise of ISIS. Here’s what he said, 3:30 into the below clip: ‘If there is to be support for Iraq, it has to be support for a government of Iraq. That is; a government of all the people; and that is representative of and responsive to all elements of Iraq. President Obama has been quite clear on this: This

David Cameron has said Christians should be more evangelical “about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people’s lives”. In an article for The Church Times he said he wanted to infuse politics with Christian values such as responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility and love. In recent years politicians have often been shy about talking about religion, reluctant perhaps to invoke the authority of God to score a political point. William Ewart Gladstone had no such anxiety, saying in 1832: “Restrict the sphere of politics to earth, and it becomes a secondary science”. In 1880, when he was campaigning for Home Rule