How Maggie took her whisky

The whirligig of time brings in his… astonishments. Who would have thought it? Even a couple of decades ago, the notion that the Tory party could be led by a black woman would have seemed incredible. I remember 1975, and the doubts that were expressed about Margaret Thatcher: much louder than any adverse comment about Kemi Badenoch now. There seemed to be a widespread belief that the country was simply not ready for a female PM.

When she was PM, she had to be dissuaded from serving English wine in No. 10

I recall a lunch with Barbara Castle not long after the 1979 election. A former street-fighting termagant, she seemed to have eased into post-partisan serenity. When I confessed that I was a Tory, she merely responded with a tut-tutting smile, as if I was an errant grandson. ‘Of course I wanted you Tories crushed under foot,’ she said with a flash of the old passion. ‘But I knew that if this happened, everyone would say that it had been folly to choose a woman, and any progress towards equality would have been set back for 25 years.’

There is another factor in the slow march towards the benign regimen of women: Mrs Thatcher as a feminist influence. Before 1975, the men in charge of law firms or counting-houses – and it was always a man in those days – would almost all have spoken with one voice on the subject of hiring female employees. ‘The sweet little things. But where would they sit? Which lavatories could they use? Everyone knows that they’re no use for one week a month, and they’d distract the young men. And if by a miracle the girl did turn out to be some good, she’d only go off to get married and have babies. Jolly good thing too, but rather a waste of all our time.’ Yet within a few months, it was precisely chaps like that who were proclaiming that Maggie’s the best man we’ve got – while also wondering, when about to reject an able girl, whether they might be turning down the next Margaret Thatcher.

Thinking back to those days reminded me about Maggie and drink. Just after she won the leadership, she was asked if the Thatchers would be opening a bottle of champagne.

‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘I’m not sure we’ve got any at home.’ She was probably telling the truth. In those days, the less sophisticated upper middle-classes – i.e. most of them – regarded champagne as a drink for weddings or very special occasions and not as an habitual aperitif. Denis concentrated on snorts: gin or Scotch. In his memsahib’s case, it would have been Scotch, well-diluted.

In later years, that changed. Once Thatcher left office, Peter Morrison stayed on as her PPS, even though he had helped to lose her the leadership. Peter would not have known how to pour a weak whisky. He did not quite crush the cap after opening the bottle, but little would be left. Late-ish in the evening, people observed that Margaret would often seem a little tipsy. No wonder, after three or four Morrison-scale glasses. As she no longer had enough to do and was producing more adrenaline than she could consume, the effect was compounded.

She never took much interest in wine, even when excellent bottles were on offer. Indeed, when she was PM, she had to be dissuaded from serving English wine in No. 10. In recent years, there have been improvements in English wineries, but even so. It might be tempting for a state banquet with President Macron as the guest of honour, but only if the Channel Fleet had been alerted (I take it that we still have a Channel Fleet).

‘The Tories are not dead, only sleeping,’ Tony Blair once warned his party. This time, the nap might be shorter. British politics is about to enter an exciting phase. I not only hope that Kemi will be as good as I think. I believe that she will be as good as I hope.