Thatcher's Trial: Six Months That Defined A Leader by Kwasi Kwarteng, book review
How a key period in Thatcher's premiership cemented her public image
Thursday 03 September 2015
Kwasi Kwarteng was tipped for early success when he arrived as a newly elected Conservative MP in 2010, but success, in the form of promotion to ministerial office, has so far passed him by. He has, though, become an established voice of the Tory right, and a prolific writer of books. During his first four years in Parliament, he wrote two and co-authored three. He has now added another.
His latest is a narrative account of six months in the life of Margaret Thatcher. According to the book's subtitle, this period between the budget in March 1981 – which Kwarteng accepts was "a Budget to produce three million unemployed" – and the reshuffle in September, when she sacked three Cabinet ministers and the party chairman to bring on the Thatcherites Nigel Lawson, Cecil Parkinson and Norman Tebbit – "defined" her as a leader. Between those dates, the Labour Party was torn in two, bringing the short-lived Social Democratic Party into existence, the IRA's first elected MP, Bobby Sands, starved himself to death in H-block prison, and riots erupted in Brixton, Toxteth and other city centres. (There was also a royal wedding, of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, which probably drew more public attention than all the other events combined, but Kwarteng lets that pass in a single sentence).
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