Heeere's Maggie!
GELB, NORMAN
BAD LUCK FOR THE TORIES Heeere's Maggie! BY NORMAN GELB London MARGARET THATCHER is about to flex her political muscles again??this time on the telly, for all to see. That is bad news for...
...The Conservatives' strength in much of the country, moreover, has sunk even below that of Britain's third political force, the Liberal Democratic Party...
...The risk for Major in having the old Tory feuds recalled, especially with the venom the Iron Lady is capable of, is that they will inspire emulation...
...The "Iron Lady"??as the Soviets (you remember them) long ago dubbed her??is a formidable personality, not easily silenced...
...Besides, there is no sign of a public craving to have her back at the nation's helm...
...despite a number of Tory defections...
...Although outraged by what she considered the perfidy of trusted ministers, once it became apparent that she no longer had adequate Conservative parliamentary support, she grudgingly agreed to give way to Major...
...Word quickly spread that he had told the interviewer he was using the Lyndon Johnson strategy??evidently an allusion to President Johnson's preferring to have influential critics "inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in...
...He can take some comfort from the fact that in the past the Tories have managed to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds on election day...
...The Tories are in a peculiar position at the moment...
...At the height of the 1990 conflict, it was widely reported that Kenneth Clarke, today Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Malcolm Rifkind, the current Minister of Defense, told Thatcher her popularity was so low, she must resign to save the Tories from political disaster...
...Should the thought somehow fail to cross their minds, the London newspapers??all of which have turned against Major??will no doubt rectify that situation...
...If the Tories suffer additional setbacks in those votes, as seems probable, the morale of their supporters will be further undermined...
...since departing, she has not hesitated to publicly criticize her successor even in periods of tenuous party unify...
...During the debate earlier this year over British ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, for example, Thatcher attacked the government's support for the controversial pact designed to advance European union with a vigor most Tories found excessive...
...Three members of his Cabinet??Social Security Minister Peter Lilley, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Michael Portillo and Minister for Wales John Redwood??are known to be closet Thatcherites...
...That is not to imply the Conservatives are home and dry...
...At the minimum, she is sure to restore some fuss and fury to British politics...
...Had he lost and stepped down, however, the Opposition Labor Party might well have driven the Conservatives from power...
...A Labor-Liberal Democratic coalition would stand a good chance of prevailing, and has done so previously at the local level...
...In the case of Maastricht it could perhaps be argued that Thatcher's disloyalty toward the Prime Minister was understandable, because in her view British sovereignty was at stake...
...As a member of the House of Lords, she actually would find it extremely difficult to exercise the duties of the prime minister...
...In the end he squeaked by...
...How the Conservatives plan to resurrect themselves may become apparent before this article reaches some readers??at the party's annual conference in Blackpool, October 5-8...
...The insecurity underscores the Tories' need to effect real and visible changes...
...While unemployment continues to hover around 10 percent here, most other indicators point to the beginnings of a recovery after three years of economic slump...
...That is bad news for Britain's battered Prime Minister John Major, who already is barely clinging to power...
...Important local contests and elections to the European Community Parliament are just around the corner...
...It was fully expected that her influence would linger in the upper echelons of her beloved Conservative Party...
...But it is hard to find any concern for national or party welfare in her decision to participate in a BBC television series focusing on her career that promises to seriously damage the Conservatives...
...Should the party also lose other parliamentary by-elections, Major's slim and unreliable House of Commons edge??a mere 16 votes at present??could be placed in jeopardy...
...Labor would get 46.5 per cent of the vote, to 25.5 per cent for the Conservatives and 23 per cent for the Liberal Democrats...
...According to the producer, Lady Margaret??she is now a baroness and holds a seat in the House of Lords??refers to the actions of some of her Cabinet members at that point as "treachery...
...Two recent parliamentary by-elections saw long-held Tory districts choose Liberal Democrats by humiliating margins...
...Under Paddy Ashdown's guidance they have earned solid credibility as a moderate yet dynamic political entity...
...Consequently, the Laborites have reaped only minimal benefit from their rivals' difficulties...
...Unless John Major can dramatically improve both his party's appeal and his own, he will be pushed aside as surely as his tougher predecessor was, with or without a palace coup...
...The Liberal Democrats have fared far better...
...Their support, though, is confined in large part to the predominantly middle-class South, making it unlikely that they alone could topple the Tories...
...Those three ministers are associated with the "No Turning Back" clique of Thatcher loyalists sprinkled across the Tory benches in the Commons, the majority of whom consider Major the most inept prime minister in modern times...
...pected to castigate are several members of John Major's Cabinet...
...One hears, incidentally, no predictions that the Iron Lady will attempt to reclaim her former office...
...But after sitting mostly on the sidelines forthe past three years, she clearly has grown restless and is eager to make her presence felt again...
...What has been made known about it suggests she will reopen Tory wounds suffered in 1990, when the collapse of her popularity and subsequent infighting forced her out of office...
...Among the people she is exNORMAN Gelb reports regularly for The New Leader on British affairs...
...But advocates of a rapprochement have so far had meager success in persuading Smith and Ashdown to work together...
...The series is scheduled to begin the week of October 18, to coincide with the publication of Thatcher's memoirs, The Downing Street Years, by HarperCollins...
...Still, all is not gloom for Major...
...Back in the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, he surely will also be featured in her television tales...
...In their eyes he is not merely woefully uncharismatic, he lacks the will to carry through Thatcher's campaign of phasing out the welfare state in Britain...
...As I write, various commentators are saying a "stalking horse" candidate will be put up against Major, to prepare the way for a more serious challenger...
...With Thatcher, from her televised pulpit, casting her ouster as a coup by her Cabinet, her admirers in the parliamentary party may very well start to wonder if it isn't time for them to follow suit...
...They are almost certainly the unspecified men Major called "bastards" after a recent television interview, unaware that the recording equipment had been left running...
...Her foremost objective was to block the strong leadership bid of Michael Heseltine, whom she had abominated from the day in the mid-'80s that he stormily walked out of her government in the middle of a Cabinet meeting, fed up with her domineering ways...
...A similar scenario preceded Thatcher's exit...
...Indeed, she had made it clear that she would be offering Major advice from time to time, whether he wanted it or not...
...Numerous people here are ready to wager that Chancellor of the Exchequer Clarke, a crowd-pleasing politician not freighted with the Prime Minister's wimpish image, will take over in the near future??regardless of the accusations Thatcher hurls at him from the tube...
...Yet no one quite foresaw her turning into the mischievous gadfly she has become...
...Clarke, it was said, threatened to quit her Cabinet if she stayed on...
...Few here believed they were hearing the last of Thatcher when she reluctantly vacated Number 10 Downing Street three years ago and handed the keys to Major, then one of her proteges...
...If Major were defeated on the issue in the House of Commons, it was feared, he might feel compelled to resign and call national elections...
...It should be noted, too, that the strenuous efforts of Opposition Leader John Smith notwithstanding, Labor has failed to completely dispel its image as the party of high taxes and lavish welfare handouts...
...And a poll published September 10 showed that if a general election were held tomorrow...
...The situation is so precarious that this summer Conservative whips, fearful of having a seat the party holds suddenly become vacant, advised their MPs to avoid dangerous activities while on vacation...
...Nevertheless, opinion polls show Major to be the least popular leader since such samplings began...
...Throughout her more than 11 years as Prime Minister she demanded absolute allegiance from her fellow Tories...
Vol. 76 • September 1993 • No. 11
