Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [14]
So I do not think that any of us at No. 10 relaxed much that day, which turned out to be a long one. (The previous night I had had no more than a couple of hours’ sleep, if that.) I received the usual detailed security briefing which is given to incoming prime ministers. Then I went upstairs to the study in which I was to spend so many hours in the years which followed. I was accompanied by Willie Whitelaw and our new Chief Whip, Michael Jopling. We began to sift through the obvious and less obvious names and slowly this most perplexing of jigsaws began to take shape. While Willie, the Chief Whip and I discussed the appointments to the Cabinet, Ken Stowe sought to contact those involved to arrange for them to come in the next day.
At 8.30 p.m. we took a break for a meal. Knowing that there were no canteen facilities at No. 10, my personal staff brought in a Chinese meal from a take-away and some fifteen of us sat down to eat in the large dining-room. (That, I think, was the last take-away while I was Prime Minister.)
I knew that the hardest battles would be fought on the ground of economic policy. So I made sure that the key economic ministers would be true believers in our economic strategy. Geoffrey Howe had by now thoroughly established himself as the Party’s chief economic spokesman. Geoffrey was regularly bullied in debate by Denis Healey. But by thorough mastery of his brief and an ability to marshal arguments and advice from different sources, he had shown that beneath a deceptively mild exterior he had the makings of the fine Chancellor he was to become. Some of the toughest decisions were to fall to him. He never flinched. In my view these were his best political years.
After becoming leader in 1975, I had considered appointing Keith Joseph as Shadow Chancellor. Keith had done more than anyone else to spell out in his speeches and pamphlets what had gone wrong with Britain’s economic performance and how it could be transformed. He has one of the best minds in politics. He is an original thinker, the sort of man who makes you understand what Burke meant when he wrote of politics being ‘philosophy in action’. He is rare in another way too: he combines humility, open-mindedness and unshakeable principle. He is deeply and genuinely sensitive to people’s misfortunes. Although he had no doubt of the Tightness of the decisions which we were to make, he knew that they meant unviable firms would collapse and overmanning become unemployment, and he cared about those who were affected — far more than did all our professionally compassionate critics. But such a combination of personal qualities may create difficulties in the cruel hurly-burly of political life which Chancellors above all must endure. So Keith took over at Industry, where he did the vital job that no one else could have done of altering the whole philosophy which had previously dominated the department. Keith was — and remains — my closest political friend.
John Biffen I appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He had been a brilliant exponent in Opposition of the economic policies in which I believed and, before that, a courageous critic of the Heath Government’s U-turn. But he proved rather less effective than I had hoped in the gruelling task of trying to control public expenditure. His later performance as Leader of the House where the qualities required were acute political sensitivity, good humour and a certain style was far happier. John Nott became Secretary of State for Trade. He, too, had a clear understanding of and commitment to our policies of monetary control, low taxes and free enterprise. But John is a mixture of gold, dross and mercury. No one was better at analysing a situation and prescribing a policy to deal with it. But he found it hard, or perhaps boring, to stick with the policy once it had been firmly decided. His vice was second thoughts.
With Geoffrey and Keith helping me to give a lead to the Cabinet, however, and