Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [445]
I was, therefore doubly surprised when I was told over the light lunch — soup and fruit — I used to have on Parliamentary Questions days that Nigel again wanted to see me. I had thought he was not even in the country. We again met in my study where he repeated his demand and said that he wanted to resign. There was nothing much new I could say and not much time to say it since I had soon to be in the House of Commons. But I made it clear that Alan Walters was not going and hoped that Nigel would reflect further. I said that I would see him after I had finished with Questions and my statement.
Over in my room in the House of Commons I was having a last look through my briefing when at 3.05 p.m. — a bare ten minutes before I was due to answer Questions in the House — Andrew Turnbull, my private secretary, came in to tell me that Nigel Lawson had decided to resign and that he wanted an announcement out by 3.30 p.m. This was out of the question. We had not told the Queen. We had no successor arranged. The London financial markets would still be open. I myself was about to face an hour on my feet answering questions and making a statement on the Commonwealth Conference. I repeated that I would see Nigel some time between 5.00 p.m. and 5.30 p.m. back in No. 10.
I only got through Questions and the Statement by relegating the crisis of Nigel’s departure to the back of my mind. About an hour later, on my way out of the Chamber, I asked John Major, who as Foreign Secretary had been sitting beside me for my Statement, to follow me to my room: ‘I have a problem.’
Ideally, I would have liked to make Nick Ridley Chancellor. But, particularly under these difficult circumstances, Nick’s scorn for presentational niceties might well have compounded the problem. John Major, who knew the Treasury from his days as Chief Secretary, looked the obvious choice. I had already thought that John might succeed me. But I would have liked him to gain more experience. He had only been at the Foreign Office for a few weeks and had not yet fully mastered this department, so very different from the Treasury where he had been an effective and competent Chief Secretary. He would have liked to stay as Foreign Secretary rather than return to pick up the pieces after Nigel. When he expressed some reluctance to go from the Foreign Office to the Treasury, I told him that we all have to accept second best occasionally. That applied to me just as much as to him. So he agreed with good grace.
I dashed back to No. 10 to see Nigel, who was still insisting that his resignation should be announced immediately. On reflection there seems to me just one explanation for Nigel’s indecent haste. I think that he feared that I might telephone Alan Walters, who was in America and quite oblivious to what was happening, and that Alan would resign. This would have deprived him of the excuse he wanted. I now told Nigel that John Major was succeeding him. There was nothing left to discuss and it was a short meeting. I was sorry that our long and generally fruitful association should end in that way. I then telephoned Alan to tell him what happened. He told me that Nigel’s resignation had put him in an impossible situation and so he insisted, against all my attempts to persuade him, on resigning too.
JOHN MAJOR AS CHANCELLOR
Nigel’s departure was a blow to me — and one which Geoffrey Howe used to stir up more trouble when, the following weekend, in a speech of calculated malice, he praised Nigel as a Chancellor of great courage and insisted on entry into the ERM on the terms outlined at Madrid. But Nigel’s going was also a boon in one respect. At least in John Major I had a Chancellor who, though he lacked