Nigel Lawson may claim that Brexit is finishing the job that Margaret Thatcher started but the prime minister was infuriated by his 1989 resignation, her newly released personal papers reveal.
For the Conservatives, it was a year which had uncanny parallels with today – a prime minister facing questions about her leadership, a party split over Europe and the threat of cabinet resignations over the issue.
Thatcher would survive the year but the resignation of Lawson in October, over the influence of her economic adviser Alan Walters, came, in hindsight, to be seen as the beginning of the end for the Iron Lady.
Lawson was at loggerheads with Thatcher and Walters over the exchange rate mechanism (ERM). The then chancellor was – ironically given his current status as a staunch Brexiter – the only one of the trio who wanted the country to join the ERM, although he was motivated by a desire to control inflation rather than strengthening bonds with Britain’s European partners.
Thatcher recorded his departure in a private memo in terse terms: “Early Thursday morning – hair set 8-8.30 Andrew [Turnbull] came up to say Nigel Lawson wanted to see me. Went down 8.50 …
“The reason for his visit – which he had considered very carefully – was that unless I agreed to sack Alan Walters, he would hand in his resignation as chancellor. This seemed to me an absurd, indeed reprehensible proposition … in my view no one could possibly resign on the basis of such a flimsy and unworthy proposal.”
She said she urged him to think again, concluding: “I then put the matter out of my mind.”
The papers reveal that the following month she told the Sun’s editor at the time, Kelvin MacKenzie, in an off-the-record interview, that after taking a comforting “we love you” call from her children on the day of the resignation, in characteristic no-nonsense fashion she then prepared supper for her and her husband, Denis:…
