The Real Iron Lady by Gillian Shephard Page A

views. The accounts also indicate that, on occasion, she was prepared to listen and accommodate difference in order to make progress. But there is too much evidence of her over-ruling objections from colleagues and, on occasion, simply shouting them down, actually in Cabinet, for it to be ignored.
    John Hoskyns, in
Just in Time: Inside the Thatcher Revolution
, analyses it thus:
    She did not seem to understand that colleagues could not answer back without being disrespectful, in front of others, to a woman and to a Prime Minister. She was too ready to blame others when things went wrong, and gave too little praise or credit when it was due. None of these things would be forgiven when her position became weaker.
    In particular, the aggression she showed towards Geoffrey Howe, despite the many years they had worked closely together, seems inexplicable and, indeed, inexcusable.
    In his book,
Conflict of Loyalty
, Geoffrey Howe describes an extraordinary incident in December 1981 as he prepared tomake his Autumn Statement to the Commons. Compared with the events that led to his resignation, this episode ended relatively well although the description of the Prime Minister’s behaviour is, to say the least, unedifying.
    Howe realised that ‘this particular exercise (the Autumn Statement) was almost bound to be a public-relations zero, at best. For its essential structure lacked virtually all the tax-cutting or scene-shifting components that can add cheer or authority to a proper Budget.’ In the event, the press and public reception of it was much as he expected, with the
Daily Mail
describing it ‘as electrifying as an algebra lesson’.
    He continues,
    But the most startling treatment of my Statement came from next door, in the form of a last-minute row about the presentation. The Prime Minister had been closely informed about, indeed engaged in discussing, the substance of everything that I had to say, and had not objected. But when, on the day before the Statement’s delivery, she was routinely sent the full text, she protested vigorously. She delivered this presentational broadside (and she was right about the problem though short of a solution) at an early-evening meeting with me. This led me to summon a group of senior advisers and drafters to a late-night meeting in the downstairs sitting room at No. 11. We met at about 9 p.m. Some were in favour of sticking to the original text, John Kerr and some others were forrevision, if only on the ground that it would be politic to make at least some changes.
    We were still at work on this exercise when we were interrupted (and astonished) by the arrival of the Prime Minister through the connecting door with No. 10. Margaret had apparently just returned from a dinner engagement (I never did find out where), and been told by her Treasury private secretary, Michael Scholar, of the meeting taking place next door. To his dismay, she decided to join the proceedings. We had no time to think of reducing the large cast present. Margaret, who was in most unprepossessing mood, proceeded to play to the gallery outrageously, more than I had ever witnessed before. Anyone who attempted to describe the reformulations on which we had agreed was shouted down. So was I. At one point she exclaimed, ‘If this is the best you can do, then I’d better send you to hospital and deliver the Statement myself.’
    The storm eventually blew itself out and the lady withdrew. A shaken handful of trusties stayed on to complete our redraft. Michael Scholar and John Kerr prudently decided to withhold the product from Margaret until the morning after. It was a little shorter and perhaps to that extent, better, than the original. But it was not in substance any different from the first version, or from the reformulations that Margaret had derided so fiercely. There was no further comment from that quarter until after I had delivered the Statement. By the time I got back to No. 11 there