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Adrian Lee is a solicitor-advocate in London, specialising in criminal defence, and was twice a Conservative parliamentary candidate.
When future historians come to write the story of Kemi Badenoch’s time as Leader of the Opposition, it will likely feature, at least in passing, the events of Christmas 2024.
Firstly, there was the Radio 4 Today interview, where she refused to commit to any policy positions. Then there was the response to Nigel Farage’s announcement of Reform U.K.’s membership figures. Finally, there were reports of a supposed meeting with GB News bigwigs, where it is alleged that she complained that the channel was becoming “a haven for my enemies”.
The general view of the Conservative-supporting media was that Badenoch could not hold the position of neutrality on policy commitment for very long, and that she was mistaken to become embroiled in a public squabble with Farage over his statistics. Little comment was made about the Daily Mail’s front-page report of the GB News meeting story.
Another aspect of press coverage has been a comparison with Margaret Thatcher’s period in Opposition from 1975 to 1979. Writing in The Daily Telegraph on New Year’s Eve, Iain Dale argued that Mrs Badenoch is laying firm leadership foundations by taking her time to put the apparatus of policy development into place. He pointed out that Margaret Thatcher employed a similar strategy.
It is arguable that of all the stages of her career, her Opposition years are the least closely examined. For many journalists, the drama of the 1975 leadership contest looms large, but little attention is paid to the following four years before entering Downing Street. Maybe this is in part because of Margaret Thatcher’s own later comment that she “…was not a very good Leader of the Opposition”? Fortunately, her own estimation of her younger self was wrong.
Robin Harris, one of Thatcher’s recent biographers, has described how the new Conservative leader soon “found herself overwhelmed” by the volume of work that came with the role. Her office was run by 25-year-old Richard Ryder, formerly a Daily Telegraph’s gossip column journalist, who would later go on to become a Conservative M.P.
Ryder had been recruited to her staff by Airey Neave. Margaret Thatcher also employed two female secretaries: Caroline Stevens (who later married Richard Ryder), and Alison Ward (who later married John Wakeham). Ward principally concerned herself with organising Mrs Thatcher’s constituency caseload. At this stage, she was woefully underfunded and in dire need of additional assistance.
Although the Centre for Policy Studies (C.P.S.), based in Wilfred Street under the direction of the acerbic Alfred Sherman, had been established by Keith Joseph and Thatcher in 1974 as the first independent Conservative think-tank, she still relied heavily on the Conservative Research Department (C.R.D.) for daily policy advice. This became an instant problem, as with only a couple of exceptions, most C.R.D. staff strongly opposed the views and opinions associated with Thatcher.
Not only were most of them still loyal supporters of her predecessor, Edward Heath, but people of like mind had been recruited continuously to the C.R.D. for some thirty years. Thatcher inherited Ian Gilmour, one of the Tory Left’s most factional members and future defector to the Liberal Democrats, as C.R.D. Chairman. She promptly removed and replaced him with Angus Maude, not that he was much better.
However, in the position of paid Director of the C.R.D. remained Chris Patten, who had only contempt for the Thatcher-Joseph school of Conservatism. He allegedly referred to the Leader behind her back as “Hilda” (her middle name) and her friend Joseph as “The Mad Monk”.
Thatcher’s first Shadow Cabinet resembled an assembly of her main internal party enemies. With the likes of scandal-tainted alcoholic Reggie Maudling (who made no secret of his personal and political detestation of Thatcher) now Shadow Foreign Secretary, and the ubiquitous Ian Gilmour as Shadow Home Secretary, she must have felt very vulnerable in the early days.
Politically, the worst was probably Jim Prior, who remarked to the Labour MP Brian Walden that “She is, of course, completely potty, Brian. She won’t last six months.” He later upbraided Thatcher by saying that it was “wrong to speak of winning an intellectual argument, because that implied you had a body of doctrine.”
Despite this, they all remained strongly wedded to a prices and income policy, collective bargaining with the trade unions, and détente with the Soviet Union. They particularly decried the notion of union reform.
The only Shadow Cabinet members who vaguely shared her economic vision were Keith Joseph, Geoffrey Howe, Angus Maude, Airey Neave, Sally Oppenheim, and (sometimes) John Biffen. Only four of these had voted for her on the second ballot, and only two had supported her on the first ballot of the leadership election.
None of the Thatcherite appointments were rated by the old establishment. William Whitelaw wrote, “Of course, it is now becoming clear that her cohorts have a.) little talent and b.) no idea at all about running a party.”
In addition, there were huge tensions within the Thatcher-supporting ranks. Firstly, Thatcher never personally liked Howe. He was only considered for the position of Shadow Chancellor after Whitelaw had threatened resignation from the front bench if she appointed Joseph to the position.
Not that she went to Howe as her second option either. Mrs Thatcher next approached Sir Edward Du Cann, but he turned it down, saying that he preferred to remain Chairman of the 1922 Committee, whilst continuing to work in the City. Finally, she approached Geoffrey. Howe had a personality which grated with his Leader from Day One. She thought him timid and ineffectual, with “wet” opinions on everything, save economics.
It probably didn’t help that his wife, Elspeth, was not a Conservative at all. According to Charles Moore, Denis Thatcher once referred to her as “that bitch of a wife.” Meanwhile, Howe loathed Alfred Sherman at the C.P.S., and Sir John Hoskyns, her free-market business advisor, initially thought Thatcher to be intellectually shallow. So how did Thatcher survive and go forward?
Firstly, she had political principles and remained staunchly attached to them. Thatcher never lost sight of her goal. She never made any secret of her belief in a return to a free enterprise economy, with strict control of the money supply. Likewise, she rejected détente with the Soviets, for which she soon acquired the sobriquet of the “Iron Lady”.
Thatcher frequently made speeches that angered Shadow Cabinet members but that also gained increasing support amongst both her grassroots Party members and the wider Conservative electorate. She stuck to her guns.
Secondly, she gathered her own circle of advisors, comprising like-minded allies such as Ralph Harris, T.E. Utley, Paul Johnson, Patrick Cosgrave, Robert Moss, Russell Lewis, Robert Conquest, and Kingsley Amis. These people, many of them formerly associated with the socialist cause, provided intellectual muscle that her internal party critics or Labour opponents could not match.
Thirdly, she worked tirelessly to hone her presentational skills. She employed the likes of Gordon Reece to develop her image, the Saatchi brother to develop a professional advertising campaign and Ronald Millar to draft speeches in a language best suited to her style of delivery. Margaret Thatcher always listened to advice given and recognised that for her cause of restoring Britain to succeed, she must do everything practical to ensure her party’s victory.
Finally, she benefited from the collapse of the very policies that both her internal and external opponents championed. The mid-1970s inflation rise to 27 per cent vindicated her monetarism. The collapse of the ‘Social Contract’ with the unions, leading to the Winter of Discontent, proved her view that the unions were in dire need of reform.
If Badenoch is to survive the first bumpy weeks of her Leadership, she must examine how Thatcher did this 50 years ago and take the lessons that she learnt to heart.
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