From greatness to suicide, the Thatcher tragedy

SOME people think it is splendid. For others it is a hoot. I am afraid I find it neither. The spectacle that Margaret Thatcher is making of herself is one of the saddest and most embarrassing things I can remember in British politics. If she runs true to form and makes her maiden speech in the House of Lords later today, it is likely to be another small milestone on her path to self-destruction.

Three years ago, in a front-page leading article marking her 10th anniversary as Prime Minister, this newspaper paid tribute to Mrs Thatcher's courage and the many achievements of her first two administrations. But the same article identified something rotten which was infecting her third term. It was partly the hubris to which any successful and powerful leader becomes prey. It was more than that, however.

There was the mounting evidence that she could no longer form constructive working relationships with senior colleagues. There was her burning commitment to the political folly of the poll tax. Above all, there was her increasingly hysterical denunciation of all things European. The article concluded that here was a tragedy in the making.

The culmination of that tragedy for Mrs Thatcher should have been her forced resignation from the party leadership 18 months later. At that point the curtain should have come down. She still seemed to have much to celebrate. She had the satisfaction of seeing her chosen successor rather than her assassin installed as Prime Minister. She had made a magnificent valedictory speech to the House of Commons. Her reputation, even among foes, as one of the great Prime Ministers of the 20th century, appeared assured.

In the months that followed, there were occasional interviews, mainly in America, where the reasons for her downfall were imperfectly understood, which suggested she was experiencing something akin to the shock of bereavement. Just occasionally, and invariably abroad, she would fire a warning shot in the direction of John Major and Douglas Hurd lest they yield in the negotiations on European political and economic union.

Although there were reports that Mrs Thatcher was increasingly dismayed by Mr Major's performance as Prime Minister and fears that she might attempt to sabotage the deal obtained at Maastricht, in public she maintained a stance of conditional loyalty to the Government. In the triumphant early morning of 10 April she seemed to take genuine delight in the unexpected victory and in the prospect that 'her work would be carried on'.

But then something snapped. Perhaps it was seeing her unworthy heir the hero of the hour. Perhaps the belief that a fourth term had somehow been stolen from her became unbearable. A fortnight later an extraordinary article appeared under Margaret Thatcher's by-line in the magazine Newsweek.

The piece was entitled 'Don't undo my work'. She argued that Mr Major did not have the authority to deviate from the principles she had laid down. She said: 'I don't accept the idea that all of a sudden Major is his own man. He has been Prime Minister for 17 months, and he inherited all these great achievements of the past 11 1/2 years which have fundamentally changed Britain . . . . I cut back the powers of government. Now they've got to be jolly careful they don't give government too many extra powers and undo what I've done.'

She went on to say: 'There isn't such a thing as Majorism. Thatcherism will live. It will live long after Thatcher has died, because we had the courage to restore the great principles and put them into practice, in keeping with the character of the people and the place of this country in the world.'

The thrust of Mrs Thatcher's article was that the Prime Minister, who owed everything to her, was a wet, backsliding nonentity.

On Sunday of this week, Mrs Thatcher (as she was until Tuesday) went even further in an interview with David Frost. It was an amazing performance in which for the first time she declared her formal opposition to the Government's European policy. Describing Maastricht as 'a treaty too far', she declared that the Danish referendum had quite simply saved parliamentary democracy in Britain.

Asked by Mr Frost whether she would advise Tory MPs to vote against Maastricht, even if it meant bringing down the Major government, she said: 'Vote on what you believe. You are answerable to your constituents. I don't believe it would bring down John Major. I say we worked very hard for him, but if you put yourself in the frontline of politics you must expect to be shot at. John I want to stay on but John, too, is answerable to the people.'

In the rest of the interview Mrs Thatcher gave ignorant and untruthful accounts of the Maastricht treaty, the exchange rate mechanism and the Single European Act. The fact is that almost everything she claims to hate about Maastricht in terms of Commission intrusion and centralisation actually arises from the Single European Act, which she not only whipped, but guillotined through the Commons. Such is her hypocrisy that when Mr Frost asked her whether she regretted saying in the Newsweek piece that Mr Major had not suddenly become his own man, she pretended that she meant he had become his own man on assuming the leadership and that the election had not changed anything.

Baroness Thatcher today finds herself in outright and hostile opposition to her successor. Mr Major has made it abundantly clear that he regards ratification of the Maastricht treaty as vital to his own integrity and fundamental to what his government stands for. In full knowledge of this, as she would say, she is urging Tory MPs to vote against the Government - something she would not have tolerated for an instant while Prime Minister. In other words, Lady Thatcher is determined to defeat, humiliate and destroy Mr Major. That means the Government has no choice other than to reply in kind. The Conservative Party is tribal rather than ideological. With the exception of 15 to 25 die-hard Europhobes, Tory MPs, in a straight fight, will give their loyalty to Mr Major and not to Lady Thatcher. Because of her disgraceful behaviour, she deserves little sympathy. But it is still tragic to see a great and brave political figure engaged upon a slow and very public suicide.