Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [364]
I was back in Britain by 2.30 on Tuesday afternoon. A draft of my speech for Harrogate that evening was waiting for me with Stephen Sherbourne and the speech writers when I landed at Gatwick. To my relief and their amazement I liked it. It was essentially a summary of what I, at least, thought were the three main themes of the election: Conservative prosperity, Labour extremism, especially on defence, and the new reforms of education and housing to give more power to the people. On the way to the hall at Harrogate I had been given the results of the specially large — and therefore significant — Gallup 2000 poll. They showed us with a 7-point lead. ‘Not enough,’ I said. But it was good news all the same. It seemed that our opinion poll rating had been practically level throughout the entire campaign.
I returned to London, but I did not ease up. On Wednesday morning I answered questions on the Election Call ‘phone-in programme. I spent most of the afternoon campaigning in Portsmouth and Southampton.
After voting myself, I spent Thursday morning and early afternoon in Finchley visiting our Committee Rooms and then, as the time for getting late voters out to the poll approached, I returned to No. 10. Norman Tebbit came over and we had a long talk over drinks in my study, not just about the campaign and the likely result, but also about Norman’s own plans. He had already told me that he intended to leave the Government after the election because he felt that he should spend more time with Margaret. There was not much I could say to try to persuade him otherwise, because his reasons were as personal as they were admirable. But I did bitterly regret his decision. I had too few like-minded supporters in the Government, and of these none had Norman’s strength and acumen.
I had supper in the flat and listened to the television comment and speculation about the result. Before I left for Finchley at 10.30 p.m. I heard Vincent Hanna on the BBC forecasting a hung Parliament. ITV was talking about a Conservative majority of about 40. I felt reasonably confident that with the Alliance vote having clearly collapsed we would have a majority, but I was not at all confident how large it would be. My own result would be one of the later ones; but the first results began to come in just after 11 p.m. We held Torbay with a larger than predicted majority. Then we held Hyndburn, the second most marginal seat, then Cheltenham, a seat targeted by the Liberals, and then Basildon. At about 2.15 a.m. we had passed the winning post. My own majority was down by 400, though I secured a slightly higher percentage of the vote (53.9 per cent).
I was driven back into town, arriving at 2.45 a.m. at Conservative Central Office to celebrate the victory and thank those who had helped achieve it. Then I returned to Downing Street where I was met by my personal staff. I felt grateful to them because, whatever the deficiencies of the national campaign, they had done a superb job. I remember Denis saying to Stephen Sherbourne, as we went down the line: ‘You have done as much as anyone else to win the election. We could not have done it without you.’ Stephen may have been less pleased by my next remark. It was to ask him to come up to the study to begin work on making the next Cabinet. A new day had begun.
* See Chapter 22.
* Seep. 591.
CHAPTER XX
An Improving Disposition
Reforms in education, housing and the Health Service; the situation in Scotland
THE NEW GOVERNMENT
The first priority after the 1987 election victory was to see that I had the right team of ministers to implement the reforms set out in our manifesto. The reshuffle was a limited one: five Cabinet ministers left the Government, two at their own request. The general balance of the new Cabinet made it clear that ‘consolidation’ was no more my preferred option after the election than before it. John Biffen, whose less than inspiring slogan this had been, left