Andrew Thomson on Margaret Thatcher

“I took care not to arrange a single meeting between Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative councillors on Barnet Council. For allowing her to sit round the same table would have ended with blood on the floor, and it would not have been hers. That they are Conservative councillors matters little to her. She cannot see a councillor, let alone a bunch of them, without the conviction rising rapidly in her that they could be running their council under a much stricter financial regime.”

“It is difficult to exaggerate either the extent to which research underpins her authority and power or the liking she has for statistics of any sort. Knowledge is power, and she loves retaining almost any sort of knowledge, although with something more than the lawyer's ability to read rapidly and retain facts for only as long as is necessary for a case... It is this enquiring and researching mind, coupled with such a retentive memory and the ability to get to the very heart of the most complex of issues, which underpin her will and authority.”

“Faced with a wilful woman armed with facts and figures, the intelligent question is how best to disarm her. Confronting her is easy; anyone can do that, and lose. Winning against her is the hard part. The best way is to approach her with an argument that is presented crisply and knowledgeably, then stick with it as she tries to find the weak spots. She is intolerant of intellectual slackness, of threadbare arguments and of poor advocacy. She enjoys a good, businesslike argument, provided it is based on solid facts. She always demands thorough research to back up cases, both her own and those of others; this is one of her strongest weapons in advancing her beliefs and objectives. The incautious Minister who fails to learn his Whitehall brief thoroughly will soon find that she has absorbed it in greater detail than he has – and that now she is using it against him. Politics and Government are very serious, professional business for her... Margaret Thatcher...prefers a good argument to a good joke.”