A POLITICAL era ended yesterday when Margaret Thatcher announced that she would resign next week as prime minister. The foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, and the Chancellor, John Major, immediately entered the Conservative leadership battle.
The prime minister, tears in her eyes, told the cabinet at 9 am: "I have concluded that the unity of the party and the prospects of victory at a general election would be better served if I stood down to enable cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot."
She had decided overnight that she did not have the troops to win and urged cabinet colleagues to unite in electing one of their number to replace her, underlining her determination to stop Michael Heseltine.
Mrs Thatcher's departure brought her party an immediate opinion poll bonus. First results of a snap On-Line telephone poll of 760 voters for The Times last night showed that if Mr Heseltine were at the helm, 47 per cent would support the Tories, compared with 42 per cent for Labour. Under Mr Major, the figures were 45-44 and under Mr Hurd, the Tories would trail 44-45.
Of the three bandwagons, the one that appeared to be gathering speed fastest last night was that of Mr Major. His team was swiftly into action and his supporters were quickly joined by Norman Tebbit, who said: "I am convinced that both left and right should unite under the leadership of John Major." He hoped the 80 to 90 MPs who had promised to support him had he stood would now opt for Mr Major.
Mr Heseltine was one of the first to acknowledge the prime minister's "awesome achievements". He said: "The important thing today is to pay tribute to the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. It has by any standards been remarkable. Perhaps the very fact that I at one moment found it impossible to continue in cabinet makes it particularly fitting for me to record the admiration and gratitude of the Conservative party for what she has achieved, and what so many of us worked so hard to help her bring about."
President Bush telephoned Mrs Thatcher from Saudi Arabia last night, thanked her for all that she had done and signed off with the words: "We love you." In the Commons and outside, MPs paid tribute to her as "the greatest peacetime prime minister this century". Even Neil Kinnock told her during question time that she amounted to more than those who had turned upon her.
The prime minister then put up a bravura performance in the censure debate, which ended with a 367-247 government victory. She was crisp, combative and humorous, winning universal cheers from Tories who could hardly believe that her reign had ended so messily. There were recriminations from hard-core supporters who felt she had been betrayed by senior party figures.
The Lady vanishes ... still ranting and raging
The Times,
23 November 1990
As Dr Owen now quotes Julius Caesar, perhaps this column can offer Coriolanus: "Bring in the crows to peck the eagles."
Yesterday, in one of her finest parliamentary performances ever, the eagle swept in and scattered the crows.
"For her," the SNP's Jim Sillars said, "it is five minutes after midnight." Such was Mrs Thatcher's command that, had it been five minutes before, the mess of pin-striped tumbleweed blowing in the wind behind her might have blown her way after all.
The "no confidence" debate started with a floundering performance from Neil Kinnock which, if one leadership election were not quite enough to be getting on with for the time being, could well have provoked another. It was dismal. "The effect on our armaments will come into absolute place," he gulped and blathered, staggering blindly around a verbal grocery shop and knocking tins off shelves. ". . . growth initiative of the alternative." I must have mis-heard that, but it is what I wrote; as did the reporter next to me. She and I looked at each other quizzically.
Mr Kinnock had started on a confident note. What tripped him was a series of logical missiles lobbed not from the government benches, but from other opposition parties. On defence, the Scottish nationalists challenged him to defend his personal position; on a single European currency, the Liberals' Jim Wallace asked him to define Labour's policy.
Soon different elements of the opposition benches were bellowing and gesticulating at each other while the Tories watched, bemused. A nightmare glimpse of a Labour government with a knife-edge majority.
Then Nigel Lawson intervened with a dagger of a question about a single currency. From this, Mr Kinnock never properly recovered.
"Windy rhetoric!" Mrs Thatcher was shouting almost before she was on her feet. It was the sort of standing start that would be envied by those youths in souped-up and supercharged Cortinas with wide wheels: away from the lights with a roar of the engine, a squeal of rear tyres and front end lifted off the ground.
This woman was very, very angry. She has been angry (in your sketchwriter's observation) for about six weeks. She was angry even before the Howe resignation. The Euro-bruising Commons tirade which provoked it was anger made flesh: a 40-minute rant of magnificent fluency. Yesterday, she threw remaining caution to the winds and she has never been more impressive. She waved her arms wildly, punching out the argument. It was a performance that had Douglas Hurd smiling in a sort of rueful wonder, his head gently shaking. Ted Heath just closed his eyes.
"Absolute nonsense!" she yelled, about Neil Kinnock's speech. "It was appalling!" She was getting into her stride. Would she care to be the governor of a pan-European central bank, the Liberals' Alan Beith, asked jokingly?
"What a good idea!" she beamed, expansively, "I hadn't thought of it."
"Now, where were we?" She looked over to Mr Speaker in mock enquiry. "I'm enjoying this!"
She really was. The afternoon had started with a catch in her throat, as she responded to Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman (C, Lancaster) - one of the few whose admiration and comfort has sounded sincere.
Now, all sorrow was cast aside, as she threw herself into the crusading aggression she loves best. Whatever will she do next?
"Why did they sack you?" Labour's Dave Nellist shouted.
I looked across at the Tory benches. Not a few of them were wondering the same thing.
