Margaret Thatcher was the best boss I ever worked for. She was demanding, expecting a little group of us to work on till the early hours of the morning when a big speech or event was planned. She made you argue hard and well for your recommendations. She worked tirelessly, always asking herself what would improve people's lives and could she bring it about.
I took the idea of privatisation to her in the Opposition years. After a good argument she told me "They will not let me do that". I set about making the public case with the help of her favoured think tank, the CPS. She had not said she was against the idea herself. Privatisation of big often loss making industries was essential to spare taxpayers all their investment costs and losses. How could the UK greatly expand and modernise its old phone system without billions of private capital and more enterprising management in competing companies? We were years behind the US. Without more and better telecoms we could not grow financial and business services as global successes.
It wasn't a smooth start for Margaret Thatcher after winning in 1979 as she felt held back by the Civil Service and Conservative Party establishment.
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After the second election win she was ready for more radical change. I moved from being a CPS based adviser into Downing Street. She then saw the need to inspire people with the idea and the opportunity not only to own their own home, but also to own shares in the company they worked for, to set up and grow their own business, to take control of their own pension savings. Telecom privatisation was a great success, transforming our system, ending phone line rationing and handling the explosive increase in data. Many bought the shares and benefited from the change.
Margaret had started badly in 1979. She felt fenced in by the establishment both in the civil service and in the Conservative party. The first two years of traditional Treasury squeeze to tackle inherited inflation and excessive borrowing went poorly, leaving her unpopular and subject to party threats. The policy that put us up the growth league and expanded prosperity was based on lower taxes, a slimmed state and a big expansion of private investment in new electricity generation, vehicle manufacture, telecoms, and much else. This evolved as her confidence grew in the radical changes proposed to her. She had not arrived in office as President Trump has in 2025 with a radical blueprint and a cascade of early executive actions. Her power built up as she allowed herself to take more decisions outside the box of the cramping official orthodoxies.
One of Margaret Thatcher's great achievements was winning the Cold War with Ronald Reagan.
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She arrived in Number 10 a convinced European. She had bought the idea that the EEC was just a free or common market. In office she learned the hard way that it was a huge constitutional project to embrace ever closer union. The EU was to destroy her political success. Senior Ministers wanted the UK to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism which was preparation for abolishing the pound and joining the Euro. Margaret was instinctively against as clearly a single currency removes many powers of self government. A long battle with colleagues ensued. When she gave in and joined the ERM she showed weakness. She had signed off on a predictably ruinous economic experiment which she knew to be wrong.
Margaret is a huge figure in our history. First woman PM, winner of the Cold War with Ronnie Reagan, the transformer of the UK public sector, generator of growth and wider ownership. She restored pride in Britain.
