Patrick Cosgrave

Clear choice for the Tories

25 January 1975: When Margaret Thatcher announced that she’d stand as Tory leader, only one national publication backed her

If I start with a reference to the sorry condition of the Tory party, I hope readers will not immediately turn to another page. If only the Tories can take a fairly cool look at themselves, it will quickly be apparent that the condition is not as serious as all that; and that it is certainly capable of repair. Housman’s ancient ‘three minutes of thought’ will suffice to show that there is only one direction in which the Tories can go. Once their collective mind is concentrated on that fact the rest will be, if not easy, at least far advanced in ease from the complicated and tragic business of the present run-up to what looks like being a bitter leadership contest.

A commonsense analysis of this confused situation would run as follows. Any new Tory leader will need courage of a quite special kind, and Mrs Thatcher has that. Everybody accepts that the party must begin to examine its conscience and find out where it stands, and that this process will be difficult, and require some certainty of mind on the part of the new leader — bearing always in mind the fact that the Conservative party depends much more on its leader, and accords, by its constitution, more power to that leader, than any other. A man who plans to come forward on the second ballot, the two major candidates having destroyed themselves on the first, is unlikely to be one of courage, or decision, or of determination: rather would he be a scavenger on the field of battle.

What seems to me to be distinctive about Mrs Thatcher’s candidature — and the same distinction attended Sir Keith Joseph earlier, and would attend Mr Powell if he were available — is that implicit in it is the conviction that Mr Heath’s leadership of the Conservative party has been a very bad one, all things considered; that the prolongation of that leadership would be very bad for the party, and for the duration ensure that it mounted no effective opposition to the Labour party.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in