Sir John Hoskyns was head of Margaret Thatcher’s Policy Unit from 1979 to 1982. In a Q&A with The Spectator, he describes what it was really like to work with her, and how David Cameron could learn from the late Prime Minister.
In 1977, you wrote the Stepping Stones Report, which looked at the fundamental problems holding Britain back in the pre-Thatcher era. If you were to write a sequel, what would you focus on?
There’s no snap answer – at least from a bystander. Stepping Stones, and our ‘Wiring Diagram’ were written for a particular crisis for the British economy. I had been working on an analysis of the problem since since the mid-seventies with the nuclear physicist and one-time head of the MoD think-tank, Terry Price. Between us, we drew up a map – the ’wiring diagram’ – to show how, in Lenin’s words, ‘everything is connected to everything else’. Margaret giggled when she saw this fearsome road map, but with her chemistry background it intrigued rather than alarmed her.
On 5 May 1979 I received a letter from her, on Number Ten paper:
Over the past two years your experience has brought a new dimension to the way in which the Party thinks and operates . . . a contribution which has given us all a fresh view of how to analyse events and prepare strategy. It has been invaluable and I greatly appreciate what you have done with the help and loyal support of Norman Strauss and Terry Price.
I will be in touch soon about what happens next
Stepping Stones was based on the wiring diagram and its message was this:
‘The UK economy is slowly moving towards disorderly collapse. Many interconnected actions will be required. But the trade unions will resist every sensible action. We must therefore move a small step at a time, starting as soon as possible, while we enjoy some sort of honeymoon.’
Our first obstacle to such a plan was the Department of Employment itself!
A ‘sequel to Stepping Stones’ would mean an analysis of some politically threatening or road-blocking obstacle to the present government’s most critically important policies; or one which might later block the road to solving some other ‘must-solve’ problem. If it sounds complicated, take comfort from Einstein:
‘Make everything as simple as possible: but not simpler.’
That’s quite a mind-numbing concept, because you can’t easily start from here. I thought to myself ‘Cameron’s already blown it’ as I watched the Rose Garden press conference: two young men joshing away: two backroom boys, catapulted into their first real executive jobs: running the country, in tandem, in the middle of a barely understood global banking crisis. and the dawning realisation that Brown had already mis-spent Labour’s original inheritance. Settling for a Coalition rather than a minority government seemed to me a fatal error from the word go. I remember watching the impressive Philip Hammond, his face an expressionless mask. ‘Oh dear’, I thought; ‘and he was going to be Osborne’s Chief Secretary’.
In fact, Cameron and Co have moved quite fast and done quite a lot better than I had expected.
Today’s ‘sequel to Stepping Stones’ might examine two or three likely scenarios facing a majority-elected Tory party after the next election, and the likely priorities. A big task for a party already in office, but anything else would be like running after a departing train. We prepared a detailed second-term paper in the summer of 1981, but the Falklands crisis then took us all back to the drawing board…
It’s believed that Michael Gove thinks that the civil service, judiciary and the EU need to be tackled in the way the Conservatives tackled the Unions in the 1980s. Would you agree?
I have little knowledge in these areas, virtually none on the judiciary, some in the Civil Service. Gove may be right. But are his choices urgent, potentially paralysing, game-changing, as the union power was in 1979? Or simply sensible changes we really must make, when other commitments allow? I would want to be sure that we really know what changes are desirable, how complex, how expensive and, above all, whether reform would take ministers eyes off more important things? The unions – with honourable exceptions – were crippling our economy and, in some cases, clearly trying to weaken or destroy the government of the day, Labour or Tory. It was clear that unions had to be brought within the law before any government could responsibly try to save the UK economy. When you learn that young civil servants are being sent to East Germany for ‘disruption training’, you know it’s time to wake up.
If there is one argument you had with Margaret Thatcher that you lost and you could revisit, what would it be? Do you think she would have agreed with you by the 1990s?
Late in 1981 I argued for the CPRS (the successful Whitehall think tank set up by Heath in the early seventies), to be formally linked to a slightly larger Policy Unit. The two had worked effectively together through the 1979-82 period, partly because both were run by businessmen, Robin Ibbs from ICI and myself. We came close to taking this route, but in the end it was dropped, I think on top Whitehall advice. I would probably have stayed on, as she wanted me to, if the new arrangement had been accepted. But that might have been a misjudgement by me – it was probably time she had a fresh appointment and fresh ideas. And Ferdy Mount, who was one of the very few commentators who read the do-or-die 1981 Budget correctly, replaced me.
Do you think you have to work as hard as Margaret Thatcher worked to succeed as PM?
Not quite, perhaps! Everything had gone wrong, the economy was heading for collapse, the Cold War was simmering, the unions appeared to be working for the USSR, if they worked at all. But being PM really is something of a 24/7 job whoever does it. She was phenomenal – and quite fearless.
In what way do you think Thatcher is most misunderstood?
The short answer would be the demonising of her, as someone who almost relished a kind of scorched earth industrial policy. On a smaller scale, the same thing can be necessary when a company’s top management – especially a large and originally successful company – begins to lose its way. A new CEO is appointed, and has no choice but to adopt what could be seen as a scorched-earth strategy, to save the company going bust and having to dismiss all its work force. Someone has to have the decisiveness and courage to grasp the nettle. Both previous administrations – Conservatives in the first half of the ‘70s and Labour in the second – had tried, faltered and lost their grip amid growing public disorder. Thatcher knew it would be tough. But she took – still takes – brickbats for the mess she inherited from both Tory and Labour administrations in the 1970s
Margaret Thatcher was also misunderstood in quite another way. Working with her, between 1977 and early 1981, I soon came to the conclusion that this remarkable lady had two distinct character traits. She was extraordinarily courageous – and deeply insecure. She bullied her less assertive cabinet colleagues, in front of others, because, with their positions and careers at her disposal, she could ‘be the boss’ in a way that made enemies. With some, like Heseltine, she was careful, because he was his own man and a real threat. But many simply put up with it, partly out of gentlemanly good manners, and partly because exploding would lead on to resignation, as Geoffrey Howe – our best Chancellor since the war – demonstrated. It wasn’t just Europe. It was also the end of a strained relationship. She was under great pressures, had never held any of the high offices of state. She might have tried this stuff on me but she knew I could simply resign, as I eventually did.
David Wollfson, Ronnie Millar – her speechwriter – and I agreed that I would tell her of our concern: that she was antagonising colleagues by putting them down in meetings. When she ran into choppy water, instead of racing to her rescue, they would tell her to go.
Instead of asking me to come and talk it through, as most men would have done, she put her head in the sand and just made a single, outraged comment, when we next met, with other people present. She seemed uneasy about a working meeting with me, unless there others present: In case I became disagreeable? I don’t know. In due course, the ‘colleagues’ came to get her, just as David, Ronnie and I had predicted: a sad ending to an epoch-making career.
Why did the likes of Chris Patten and Ken Clarke resist your analysis and methods?
Both, like Michael Heseltine, were shaped by the Heath years. They didn’t like Thatcher – perhaps largely because she toppled Heath. Everyone has his loyalties, and it was difficult for Chris who, at a young age was already heading the Conservative Research Department. The CRD’s view was basically Heathite. A change of leader can mean the end, not just of appointments, but of careers.
Do you think we need a Prime Minister’s department today?
I am uneasy about new departments, which eventually start to ossify, as the Conservative Research Department did, unable to think outside its own box. Task forces are a better way, to be closed down when they’ve achieved the task – or failed.
Some have suggested that we move to the American system of allowing the PM to appoint anybody he wants as ministers instead of only from among MPs, for example by appointing Ministers as peers and giving peers rights of audience in the Commons. Do you think this would help improve the quality of governance?
Not qualified to comment. In theory it might look attractive, because the pool of talent in the Commons is tiny. It has been suggested that about one third of MPs are ministerial material. That does not mean that the other two-thirds are necessarily of poor quality as MPs, committee members etc.
Should we remove a significant number of senior civil servants after an election as they do in the US, while keeping some to preserve institutional memory? Or would this be disastrous politicisation?
I am not qualified to express an opinion. But it would be a far-reaching (constitutional?) change. There must already be studies of the US experience. I think we already have enough ‘known unknowns’ to contend with. Leaving the EU may turn out to be enough to keep us busy. You must have slack, for when the unexpected arrives.
Is it a problem that most of Cameron’s key aides are also friends of his socially?
To the extent that this really is the case, then it must be a very unhealthy and fragile state of affairs.
Do you worry about groupthink in Number 10?
Yes. This is a danger in any organisation: MoD, business, universities (including the pathetic denial to Thatcher of an honorary degree!), the upper reaches of the Treasury in Thatcher’s first term. Likewise, the Conservative Research Dept in the late 70s. It is insidious. Recognising its existence may be half the battle.
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