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By Root 2972 0

can jeopardize politician’ long-term future. It turns press and colleagues against them; they become touchy and uncertain about their standing; and all this makes them vulnerable. Leon suffered in this way, but he also had great strengths. For example, he proved extremely capable in devising the package of measures to tighten up the sentencing of violent criminals which we introduced after the rejection of capital punishment by the House of Commons on a free vote in July. He was to prove tough and competent during the miner’ strike in 1984–5. Yet there were also weaknesses, which had nothing to do with the circumstances of his appointment. Like other brilliant lawyers I have known, he was better at mastering and expounding a brief than in drawing up his own. Moreover, everybody complained about his manner on television, which seemed aloof and uncomfortable. Of course, there have been plenty of complaints over the years about my manner too, so I had a good deal of sympathy with him. But that did not change the situation, particularly since I was shortly to lose from my Cabinet a really gifted presenter of policy.

I made Nigel Lawson Chancellor of the Exchequer — an enormous and to most people unexpected promotion. Whatever quarrels we were to have later, if it comes to drawing up a list of Conservative — even Thatcherite — revolutionaries I would never deny Nigel a leading place on it. He has many qualities which I admire and some which I do not. He is imaginative, fearless and — on paper at least — eloquently persuasive. His mind is quick and, unlike Geoffrey Howe whom he succeeded as Chancellor, he makes decisions easily. His first budget speech shows what good reading economics can make. Nigel was, I knew, a genuinely creative economic thinker. Unlike creative accountancy, creative economics is a rare and valuable thing. I doubt whether any other Financial Secretary to the Treasury could have come up with the inspired clarity of the Medium Term Financial Strategy, which guided our economic policy until Nigel himself turned his back on it in later years. As Chancellor, Nigel’ tax reforms had the same quality about them — a simplicity which makes everyone ask why no one thought to do this before.

Nigel was well aware of his own virtues. In January 1981 when I had appointed Leon Brittan as Chief Secretary to the Treasury over Nigel’ head, at Geoffrey Howe’ request, Nigel came to see me to complain: he felt slighted and was evidently cross. But I told him that his time for promotion would come and I would see that it did. Later as Secretary of State for Energy he showed that among his other qualities he was a first-class administrator. So I had by now come to share Nigel’ high opinion of himself. And for most of the 1983 Parliament I had no cause to revise that judgement; on most issues I never revised it.

But what to do with Geoffrey Howe? The time had come to move Geoffrey on. Four gruelling years in the Treasury was enough and it seems a kind of psychological law that Chancellors naturally incline towards the Foreign Office. Partly this is simply because that is the next logical step. But it is also because international finance is nowadays so important that Chancellors have to take a keen interest in the IMF, the G7 and the European Community and so the longing to tread the world stage naturally takes hold of them. I wanted to promote Geoffrey as a reward for all he had done. But I had doubts about his suitability for the Foreign Office. And, in retrospect, I was right. Geoffrey was, indeed, very good at the business of negotiation of a text line by line, for which his training as a lawyer and his experience at the Treasury fitted him. He was a perfect right-hand man for the European Councils I attended. But he fell under the spell of the Foreign Office where compromise and negotiation were ends in themselves. This magnified his faults and smothered his virtues. In his new department he fell into the habits which the Foreign Office seems to cultivate — a reluctance to subordinate diplomatic tactics to the national interest