In the last few days there has been a vigorous skirmish on the margins of the Brexit debate over the question “What would Maggie do?”
“Say yes, yes, yes to Europe,” hazarded Charles Powell, now Lord Powell of Bayswater (or perhaps his sub-editor), in an opening salvo in the most recent Sunday Times. Powell was Lady Thatcher’s closest collaborator on foreign policy in Downing Street. His closeness is indicated by the fact that he and his wife, Carla, were the only other guests at the Downing Street dinner party that Prime Minister Thatcher and Sir Denis gave to President and Mrs. Reagan on his last official visit to Britain. Powell remained a close and devoted friend to her until the day of her death. His opinion on this question therefore commands respect.
So, however, does the opinion of Robin Harris, who in the Spectator vigorously disputed Powell’s judgment. Harris was an adviser to Mrs. Thatcher in Downing Street, head of the Conservative Research Department before that, one of the “ghosts” who helped with her biography, and the man who helped her with her final book, Statecraft. He declares adamantly: “I know that Margaret Thatcher would have fought for Brexit with all her strength.”
‘I know that Margaret Thatcher would have fought for Brexit with all her strength.’
— Robin Harris
Powell’s judgment is seconded in a letter to the Times of London by one former member of Mrs. Thatcher’s cabinet, Lord Young of Graffam. And Harris’s judgment is seconded by another more politically substantial one, Lord Tebbitt of Chingford (and also by Nile Gardiner, now of the Heritage Foundation, who was the researcher on Statecraft).
Weighing in from the sidelines is Charles Moore, her distinguished biographer, who in his Spectator Diary begins cautiously by saying that he usually refuses to speculate on what Mrs. Thatcher might have done about controversies and issues that took place after her death. Moore concludes, however, that in the end, yes, she had firmly but privately embraced Brexit by the end of her public life.
Altogether it’s a very distinguished row. Who among these magnificoes is right?
I customarily take the same position as Charles Moore when asked what Mrs. T. would have done about the Iraq War or Brexit or anything else: In the strictest sense, it is impossible to know what someone would have done about an event after his death for the simple reason that the deceased didn’t know the circumstances in which the event took place. And as Edmund Burke remarked:
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme either beneficial or noxious to mankind.
In this case, Charles Powell would presumably argue that the reforms Prime Minister David Cameron brought back from his European tour constitute a real improvement in the European Union and thus favorable circumstances that would move a revived Lady Thatcher to vote “Remain” in the forthcoming referendum.
Equally, Robin Harris would doubtless respond that these reforms are so trivial that they not only fail to render the European Union less noxious to Britain but even show a contempt for the country that would confirm Lady Thatcher in her desire to vote “Leave.”
In other words, the discussion would become one about the wisdom or otherwise of the substantive decision as much as — or more than — what Mrs. Thatcher would decide if given all the facts of the case. When that happens, we all bring our personal biases to the question and risk fathering our opinions on the deceased.
That said, in the interest of reaching a commonsense verdict on what Maggie would have done, we must test the reasons that these well-informed and intelligent people give for holding such opposing views.
Robin Harris and his team have the more straightforward task. They simply quote statements that Mrs. Thatcher made in Statecraft, in occasional public speeches, and in private conversations criticizing the European Union, its federalist ambitions, and its direction of travel. Some of her public statements go to the very brink of advocating withdrawal from the EU and then stop there. But she went further in private and told a number of people that she wanted to withdraw.
Charles Powell does not deny this, but he argues that there were effectively two Thatchers, who veered back and forth between her “excitable rhetoric” and her “rational decisions.” She could fulminate against Europe “as harshly as the most hardened Eurosceptic” and then “settle for the best she could get” in European negotiations.
There is undoubtedly a deal of truth in this picture. On a few occasions I was in the room when she did exactly that. She was blowing off steam in frustration at the antics of Britain’s European partners and then, having done that and relieved her feelings, she settled down to work out — generally with Charles Powell — what she had to concede to get what she wanted. He would be less than human if, believing in the Remain case as he does, he did not also believe that he would be able to work out a similar deal with her on this occasion to stay in Europe on better terms.
Which version is closer to a dispassionate reality? Let me suggest three criteria of judgment:
In the first place, though there were occasions when Mrs. Thatcher fulminated in private and conceded later in public, her public statements were almost invariably cautious, well calculated, and reflective of her intended policy. Yet from her last year in office until she left public life, her speeches and statements on the European Union were uniformly critical on security, on its intrusions into domestic policy, and on its weakening of national sovereignty. Here is an excerpt from a speech she gave to the Congress of Prague in 1996:
The overall European federalist project, which was envisaged by some from the start but which has only in recent years come out into the open, is in truth a nightmare.
And from Statecraft:
That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era. And that Britain, with her traditional strengths and global destiny, should ever have been part of it will appear a political error of historic magnitude.
It is hard to accept that this consistent line of argument over more than a decade was a case of blowing off steam that she would overrule when faced with a decision on Brexit.
Thatcher moved consistently, if erratically, in a euroskeptic direction.
Second, though Mrs. Thatcher changed her mind on particular European issues, she did not zigzag on Europe. She followed a clear trajectory in her career from an “unenthusiastic” endorsement of U.K. membership in the EEC in the 1975 referendum through growing disenchantment with it as prime minister to her later severe criticisms of it quoted above. She moved consistently, if erratically, in a euroskeptic direction, and there is no indication of any reverse movement later.
Finally, though Powell is right to say that she laid the groundwork for making the European Union a more habitable institution for the British (for instance, by obtaining a financial rebate for the U.K.’s excessive payments to Brussels), it’s also true that later prime ministers gave much of her achievement back and surrendered still more sovereignty to Brussels. Again, it is hard to imagine her voting for a European legal order that, as the last Tory attorney general has just confirmed, means that sovereignty rests with European institutions such as the European Court of Justice rather than at Westminster — and that the only way to remedy this is to leave the EU.
All of which inclines me to the Robin Harris side of this argument — but then I am already on the Brexit side of things.
Thatcher is one of only two post-war prime ministers — the other is Churchill — whose views on Britain’s role in Europe remain both contested and important to large numbers of British people.
What is even more interesting than the outcome of this controversy, however, is the fact of it. Fully a quarter-century after she left office, Margaret Thatcher is one of only two post-war prime ministers — the other is Churchill — whose views on Britain’s role in Europe remain both contested and important to large numbers of British people. That is because — whatever other criticisms are leveled at them and may be believed — both leaders are universally recognized to have had a visceral patriotism that made them love their country and fight hard for its interests. No other prime ministers before or since inspire quite the same belief. And that’s why people ask: What would Maggie do?
P.S. The rules of journalism compel me to state that all the people mentioned in the above article are either friends or acquaintances. That’s called full disclosure. Once it would have been called “name dropping.”
— John O’Sullivan is an editor-at-large of National Review and a senior fellow of the National Review Institute.