The Real Story of Margaret Thatcher - Iain Dale

29:05So the opposition vote was split. She would have won anyway, but she wouldn't have got the size of majority. and her percentage of the vote, I think it was something like 44 in 79, 42 in 42, which compared to other elections, that's a decent performance, but she never got over 50 % of the vote. But in our electoral system,

29:31Francis Foster:that is pretty difficult to do, right? It is. Well, I can't actually remember the last time it happened. I don't know that that's happened. You know what I was also going to ask about? I think you alluded to the Iron Lady moniker a while ago. And I think it's fair to say that it was also foreign policy and geopolitics that really helped to establish her as a great stateswoman on the world stage, as someone who was really a significant figure, not just in Britain, but around the world. And was on that, was her reputation of being strong and bold, etc. Was that a fair characterization of her approach to foreign policy and world related affairs?

30:11Yes, but even there, there are myths. And as you know, the last chapter in the book is all about the myths around that, and I tried to explode some of them. The biggest myth was that she was somehow America's poodle, Ronald Reagan's poodle. Now, she was a great ally of Reagan, but they had some quite heated disagreements, not least on the Falklands War. also the invasion of grenada which the queen was head of state of grenada and reagan didn't give her any prior warning of what he was about to do and he was in the middle of a cabinet meeting when she phoned him to remonstrate and he took the phone call while the cabinet ministers were around the table and at one point and this is actually on film i think at one one point he He took the phone from his ear and he just allowed the rest of the camera to hear.

31:06She was ranting and he goes, isn't she magnificent? And there were disagreements on policy regarding the Soviet Union in that Reagan at the Reykjavik summit wanted to effectively have a nuclear free world. She thought that was absolute madness and told him so. So, again, the myth that she was just in Hoxha Reagan all the time.

31:31Francis Foster:In fairness, I'm sure that myth exists. I have not heard that. In fact, what I thought that she was known for is the fact that unlike most British prime ministers that I've lived under, she was actually, while being very, very friendly and willing to work together with our American partners, was very clear about the British national interest. And it's one of the reasons quite a lot of us would like some more of that, actually, because we want to work extremely constructively with America, I think. But we've also got to remember Britain has its own interest. And she was a great negotiator. Right.

32:05And she had a bottom line and she would never go below that. She would not have negotiated the Chagos deal that Starmer did. and I mean we're talking on the day that apparently there's been a deal with France where instead of one in one out for illegal migrants it's 17 in and one out now how they how he's going to sell that to the British people I do not know that would never have happened under Thatcher you look at her negotiating style with the EEC where she felt that we were paying far too much in and she was sort of well she was like thumped the table and said i want my money back and eventually she got it uh so she was quite she was very trenchant in in international affairs you look at um sanctions on south africa for example where she was the only prime minister or president in the commonwealth who refused to impose sanctions on south africa so this is yet another one of these myths that the left have been able to propagate that she was somehow in support of apartheid or even a racist.

33:09You look at the papers, you look at all of the records, there is nothing to substantiate that. In fact, the direct opposite, where all of her letters to the South African leadership would demand the release of Nelson Mandela. She would talk about how to gradually dismantle apartheid. The meetings that she had with them, all the records of those meetings demonstrate the same thing. And you look at the memoirs of Sir Robin Rennick, who was our ambassador to South Africa at the time, and he lays out in graphic detail exactly what she did to help bring about the end of apartheid. And yet she's got this reputation of somehow being sympathetic to it.

33:50And Nelson Mandela thanked her for her role in this when he visited her. It was only a few months before she left office. And he came to Downing Street, and Robin Rennick had had a pre-meeting with the Prime Minister and basically said to him, look, Prime Minister, he's waited 30 years to say what he's got to say to you. She goes, oh, you mean I should shut up? She did have a reputation for dominating meetings and she did shut up for an hour to the extent that the meeting went on so long that the waiting press outside were chanting free Nelson Man. So I think it's things like that where you've got to try and look through the conventional wisdom and actually try and look at the facts.

34:33And when you do that, you get a very different...

34:35Francis Foster:So perhaps you should explain then what was the nature of her opposition to the sanctioning of South Africa? Because she thought that sanctions would hurt the very people that everyone else was trying to help. And if you think about it, she was probably right on that. And it was a very lonely position. I mean, the various Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings, she was viciously attacked by people and all the different sort of anti-South African pressure groups that existed. But I remember at one, she said, I don't care if it's just me alone. If you're right, you have to stick to what you believe, even if it's a very lonely position.

35:12Sounds like Keir Starmer. I mean, sometimes she didn't help herself, but with some of those things that she would say, because she did give some sort of concession on the importation or export of Krugerrands or something. and I think she must have been in quite a tetchy mood at this press conference because she goes, yes, I did make a concession, but it was just a little teensy-weensy concession. It means nothing. You think, well, why did she do that? Similarly, when she came to an agreement with the Irish government under Gareth Fitzgerald on the Anglo-Irish agreement in 1985, which caused her a lot of headaches within her own party because they regarded it as a bit of a sellout to the Republic of Ireland.

35:53again she had a press conference where she was quite insulting to the Irish and she knew that she'd gone too far and did apologize afterwards because you think well if you're going to come to an agreement you kind of got to stick to it and defend it. Look starting a business is exciting but it isn't easy. It's not just logos merch and big ideas it's late nights awkward first sales and wondering if your bank balance is going to survive until Friday. That's why having the right tools from day one makes all the difference. Enter Shopify. Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world, from big names like Mattel and Gymshark to people just getting started on their kitchen table.

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37:15That's shopify.co.uk slash trigger. But, you know, what you're saying, actually, particularly with the Anglo-Irish agreement, particularly with apartheid, is this is a woman who is quite consistent in her principles, which is, as you said before, softly, softly catching monkey. You don't really, in life or in politics, get in anywhere, get anywhere by coming in and being unnecessarily combative. It takes time. I mean, I'm sure if I thought hard enough, I could think of things where she did do that and was combative. Well, she was combative anyway, in just her natural way. She was very combative with the EEC, as it then was, about the British rebate.

37:59And some diplomats at the time thought this was counterproductive. Sorry to pause it, Ian. There are people listening to this who've got no idea what the EEC is. Well, it was the forewarn of the EU. Okay. Up until 1992, it was called the European Economic Community. and the Maastricht Treaty in 92 turned it into the European Union, much more of a political entity. And she had always been pro-Europe. And this is, again, one of the things people often say, well, would Margaret Thatcher have voted for Brexit if she'd been alive in 2016? Well, we can never know. Most people who knew her far better than I did believe that she would have voted to remain.

38:35She was never anti-EEC. She was anti some of the rules and regulations and she became, I suppose, ever more Eurosceptic as the years went on. But when the 1975 referendum on our membership, only two years after we'd joined, she was pictured in a jumper with all the flags on from the different countries. She made speeches in favour of remaining a member of the EEC. And again, if you read a lot of her speeches, they were very pro-Europe. even the famous brew speech in 1988 where she said well we haven't successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in the uk to see the reimposed at european level i mean quite a direct thing to say but you read the rest of it and it's full of praise for the single market full of praise for sort of a bit more european integration um so again people imagine i mean one of the reasons that she was brought down was because she was because of her strident tone over uh over the future of the eec where you had a socialist president of the european commission jacques delor who effectively wanted to create a united states of europe and she saw that coming a mile off and she was a great believer in the nation state and uh the speech that probably precipitated her down for more than any other was at the beginning of November 1990, where she'd just been to the Rome Summit and came back to do a statement to the House of Commons.

40:10And she did her famous no, no, no, sort of no to the European Parliament becoming the legislature, no to the Commission becoming the executive, etc. And that really offended a lot of pro-European conservatives. but I don't believe that she would have wanted to actually leave but as I say we will never know. Before we get on to her downfall and we'll talk about all of that because it's a fascinating story there is one myth that you talk about in the book which I find particularly interesting which was told to me which is that by sort of the early 80s, 81, 80 it looked like she was on the way out her goose was cooked All of a sudden, the Argentines invaded the Falklands, or las Malvinas, whichever you want to put it.

40:58I think we'll stick to the Falklands, Francis, if you don't mind. And that saved her political bacon. Up to a point, Lord Copper. You say her goose was maybe cooked. Well, it was goose green in the other battles in the Falklands that certainly, I mean, it reinforced her reputation as an Iron Lady. It sent a really direct message to the Soviet Union don't mess with the Brits and because I think there was a general view certainly in the communist world at the time that well they would prevail because the West was too weak and we all know from recent experience what happens when the West is too weak so the Soviet Union were really watching events very very closely she could have been toppled over the Falklands very easily She had a really torrid time.

41:52On the day after the invasion, there was a House of Commons debate, and it did not go well. She didn't give a good speech. Her Defence Secretary, John Knott, gave a terrible speech. There was a meeting of the 1922 Committee. It was a Saturday sitting at the House of Commons, so very dramatic. And they were torn apart by Conservative backbenchers. Well, how could you not have known or foreseen that this was going to happen? It was a perfectly reasonable question to ask. and that night, I think it was that night, she was in her room in the House of Commons with a lot of other people and trying to think, well, what do we do now?

42:27And the first sea lord arrived in full military uniform and basically said, we have to send a task force to retake the Falklands. And she said, what do you mean we have to? He said, because if we don't, we'll be a laughingstock of the world. Britain won't mean anything any longer. And that was really all it took to persuade her to do this. So she said, well, how long will it take? And he said, it'll take me two days to put the task force together. It will sail on Monday and it'll take three weeks to get to the Forklands. And she said, no, you mean three days. He said, no, three weeks. I don't know whether she knew it was 8 ,000 miles away or not.

43:07And, well, we all know what happened then. But that was a real formative experience for her because a lot of her cabinet had fought in wars. Willie Whitelaw got an emcee, I think, in the Second World War, Francis Pym also, several others. And they had to sit her down because when the first British ship was sunk, she got quite emotional about it. And they had to sit her down and say, look, these things happen in war. You have to get over any sort of emotional attachment. But Carol Thatcher, her daughter, tells the story that she would come back to the flat in Downing Street every night and see her mother writing in her own hand letters to the families of all of the sailors or soldiers that had been killed and with tears streaming down her face which again sort of goes against the hard line image that she had um so it it was probably of every event in her premiership it was probably the most significant in the way that it it led her to become maybe a slightly different prime minister than she had been before.

44:14Did it win her the 1983 election? Well, it certainly didn't do her any harm. But if you look at the polls, they were already starting to turn. The economy was already starting to turn when the Falklands War had happened. So I'm sceptical. I think the majority would have been smaller. She would have still won, given that the Labour Party were in such a catastrophic state under a very left-wing leader, Michael Foote. She would have still won, but not by 144. Because what's also interesting about Thatcher is that she was, like you said, she was also a pragmatist. So, for instance, her friendship with General Pinochet is something that I always struggled with because I have friends who are Chilean and I know what an awful, terrible man he was to his own people.

44:59I found out recently I've got a Pinochet in my family tree. I knew there was something I didn't like about you, Ian. Well, again, here, the reason that, I mean, to describe it as a friendship, I think, is sort of overcooking the egg a little bit. But without Pinochet and Chile, we would have lost far more ships in the Falklands because he gave us intelligence as to when Argentinian planes were taking off from the Argentinian mainland to go and bomb British ships. and on the three days that that radar didn't work or was being fixed or something four british ships were sunk so she always felt a bit of a debt towards him and yes he was a brutal dictator absolutely but she never forgot that and when the blair government um arrested well i say the government i mean i don't governments don't arrest people in this country but he was arrested in Britain because there was a warrant out from the Spanish government for his arrest and he was under house arrest I think in Sunningdale for quite a long time and she sort of led the campaign to allow him to be released to go back to Chile and got a huge amount of flack for this and I quote from a speech that she gave at the 1999 Tory party conference where she explains why she was doing this.

46:23And it was because of the amount of British lives that Chile had helped save during the Falklands War. Now, that's a basic human thing, I think. And she did feel that she owed him a debt and that our country owed him a debt. And I think she was right on that.

46:37Francis Foster:Ian, and where do you think she might have stood on? We talked about the fact that the situation in 2025 is very different to the one in 1979. But nonetheless, where do you think she might have stood on the big issues of today. The cultural aspect of things has become very, very important in Britain. Mass immigration, the impact of illegal immigration. The economy is obviously a problem in its own way too. Where do you think she might have come down on these things and what might have been her policy prescriptions? Well, I don't know what her policy prescriptions would have been, but she was always concerned about excessive immigration.

47:14She made a, I think, Actually, I think it was an interview, not a speech, in 1978, something around there. And at that point, the National Front, which was the forerunner of the British National Party, a horrible, violent, racist organisation, they seemed to be gaining in popularity, particularly among football hooligans. Now, whether she was trying to signal to people on the hard ride that she would be hardline on immigration, I don't know. But in this interview, she used the word swamped. Now imagine if Nigel Farage used that word nowadays, what the reaction would be. Well, it was exactly the same in 1978.

47:53She was absolutely castigated for it. Immigration was never really a problem in the 1980s. It just wasn't. There weren't labor shortages at all. Well, the numbers were completely different. It was literally low tens of thousands. And I think there were some years when there was net emigration. So I think she would be horrified by what's going on over the channel at the moment. What would her prescription be for it? I genuinely don't know. Well, I don't imagine she'd be faffing about with you. Well, you say that, but people blithely say, well, send in the Royal Navy, which you might think would be a natural thing for her to want to do.

48:34Until you think, yeah, but what would the Royal Navy actually do? Do what the Australian Navy do?

48:40Francis Foster:No, no, no. So the Australians get your boat, they turn it around, they leave enough fuel in it so you can only return to where you've come. But that's not comparing like with like. I mean, it was successful for the Australians. They had this massive ocean, whereas we're dealing with the biggest shipping lane in the world. Now, I don't think you can necessarily compare the two. But she would have probably done something far more hardline than any British government has done. But I don't know what that would be. Well, that's what I'm saying. And that's what I'm getting at. I don't think she'd be faffing about with pretending to smash the gangs while letting noise.

49:11Francis Foster:I don't think she'd do a deal where, you know, it's one for 70. Well, she certainly wouldn't have given the French 770 million pounds to do sweet FA. Right, exactly. And did she have a sense of what it, did she ever talk about British identity or what it means to be British? What are British values? Is that something that she? She really did. And I think that's a subject that very few politicians can be very articulate on. And I'm the same. If somebody says to me, well, what does it mean to be British, Ian? You kind of know it, but it's difficult to explain. She didn't find it difficult to explain at all.

49:53It was sort of like she was very good at articulating the importance of freedom of the individual, for example. and there are so many clips now that doing the rounds on sort of Facebook reels where people taking little excerpts from her speeches and and it's incredible how in some ways quite moving it is that she does it in a way that there's a bit of an American I mean Americans are very good about talking about what it means to be American and proud to be an American and all that and she can do that and whether she learned that from Reagan or not I don't know but very few other British politicians can.

50:27So yes, identity, I think, was important.

50:30Francis Foster:But what was it that she, you might not be able to do full justice, but what was the central theme of what it means to be British in her telling? I think she was very proud of British heritage and she was proud of the empire, which, I mean, we're not allowed to say anything in favour of the British empire. You are on this show, mate. But it's the sort of thing, I know if I talk about it on my radio show, I mean, literally are torn limb from limb for even suggesting there might possibly be something positive about the British Empire in terms of educating people about democracy, for example. And I think she was very proud of our cultural history, our political history, in bringing democracy to other countries.

51:16She also was incredibly respectful and proud of the monarchy. And again, this is another myth that she didn't get on with the queen. Well, if she didn't get on with the Queen, why did the Queen go to her funeral, which she had never done for any other British prime minister apart from Churchill? It was said that Howard Wilson was her favourite prime minister. She didn't go to his funeral. And the way that their relationship was portrayed in The Crown was it was utter fiction. And it was almost as if they were at daggers drawn the whole time. Well, it's simply not true. I think the Queen didn't agree with her on South Africa, for example.

51:51I think there were one or two issues. and I think she was concerned about the rise in unemployment, but her role as the monarch was to counsel, advise and wall, and that's as far as it went. And there's a wonderful anecdote. I can't remember what I put in the book. I don't think I did. On the day of her election in 79, she went to the Queen to ask her to form a government, and the Queen's private secretary met her at her car, took her through the palace and said, Now, when you walk into the room, you walk up to the Queen, you do a curtsy, and then you kiss hands. I'm not sure there is actually any kissing.

52:29So Margaret Thatcher, wanting to be deeply respectful, did the biggest curtsy you've ever seen anyone do, and then couldn't get up. And so she looked plaintively at the private secretary, who sort of came over and grabbed her by the hand, but he couldn't pull her up on his own. So the Queen had to come up and they sort of pulled her up off the floor. She would have been mortified by that because it would have been quite humiliating. Give me one minute to tell you about Senalytics and why they're being called the biggest discovery of our time for promoting healthy ageing and enhancing your physical prime.

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54:41Francis Foster:And Ian, one of the things that I think all men, or straight men at least, like to imagine or think about is the feminine power that she had over all these men that she would be dealing with, the flirtatiousness, the fact that she used that very effectively, her feminine charms. How much truth is there to that? Oh, a huge amount. François Mitterrand, the president of France at the time, Not somebody ideologically on the same page as Margaret Thatcher, but he had a huge respect for her, and he described her as having the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe. And she really played up to that.

55:19I think with Ronald Reagan it was the same. People often ask me, well, how would she deal with Donald Trump? Which, again, is an impossible question to ask. How does anyone deal with Donald Trump? But I'm not sure whether he would have been susceptible to that kind of thing from her. in terms of the sort of flirtiness.

55:40Francis Foster:You're looking amused. Well, he appears to me at least to be someone who's very susceptible to the female charm. Well, I don't know. I'm not sure whether she would have worked on him. I'm not sure. If what you're saying is she's not his type, I probably agree. But I think that is something. It's an interesting conversation because I think as women have become more empowered and have gone into the workplace more and become more like men. I think there are fewer and fewer women who are openly willing to use those very powerful tools, actually, that are in their arsenal, you know, for understandable reasons, of course, because they come with risk if you're not someone who's in a position of real power like she was.

56:24Francis Foster:But I see the way some people react to Georgia Maloney, you know. I think there is a real power in that. And it's interesting to see somebody like her who was both simultaneously very, you might say very masculine in many ways, but also deeply unembarrassed about being very feminine and using that to get what she wanted. There's also a great anecdote about Jim Pryor, who I talked about, the employment secretary. And he was talking to her one day and he goes, Margaret, you're sounding very sexy today. He goes, have you got a cold? She says, Jim, I don't need to have a cold to be sexy. and and she did there was a certain type of man that she quite liked usually quite tall i mean sassel parkinson was was one so a very good looking man who she promoted very quickly john moore who nobody remembers now but he was seen as possibly going to be her successor in 1987 then he had some sort of breakdown but again a very sort of suave looking man she liked a man in uniform.

57:28I don't want to over-egg the pudding on this, but I think she was well aware of her attraction to a certain type of man.

57:38Francis Foster:Very interesting. And she was a bit of a fan-cag. A what? A fan-cag. Have you not heard this expression? No. Go on, trust us, you explain it. I think it's best that you do it, actually. No, with my voice, it's better that I do it. It's a woman who likes the company of gay men. That is what I assume, but it doesn't sound quite as politically correct in the modern context. It's not the phrase maybe that you hear too often nowadays. But she had a lot of gay men working for her. Matthew Paris worked for her in opposition. And she was actually quite liberal, much more liberal on some social issues than, again, her reputation suggests.

58:18because people think of her support for Section 28, which banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools. The reality is, if you read Charles Moore's book, she was never really in favour of it, but she felt she had to agree to the amendment that Dane Jill Knight and MP had put down to the legislation because she owed her one for something sort of in the past. Now, I mean, it should never have happened in my view. But it was something that... And you can't look at these things through the prism of 2025. You have to think, well, what was it like back in 1988? And as somebody who at that time, I mean, I knew I was gay, but I hadn't come out.

58:59I didn't actually see a problem with it, which people would be horrified by. Because I didn't think it was right to promote homosexuality in schools. But promoting something is not the same as discussing something. and it meant that teachers felt that if a 15-year-old boy basically said, I think I might be gay, they felt they couldn't even engage in the conversation because they might be prosecuted. Now, there weren't, I don't think, any prosecutions ever. But it led to the Tory party being seen as being very anti-gay, which, I mean, anybody who knows anything about the Tory party knows that without gay men in particular, most local associations wouldn't exist.

59:42Her PPS, Peter Morrison, who was in that position when she lost office, well, he was not only gay, it turns out he was a paedophile, and she wouldn't have known that. But she had no problem. She was one of the few conservatives in 1967 to vote for the legalization of homosexuality. She had very liberal views on abortion. Yet again, people imagine she was a real social conservative.

1:00:06Francis Foster:She's more kind of a classical liberal based on the way you're describing. Absolutely. That's really interesting. That's why I describe myself as a social liberal fiscal conservative. But the way that particularly social media is acting at the moment, I'm considered a dripping wet. You are. You are. You mean I'm considered or I am? No, no, you are a wet. Even I consider you a wet. But I'm not a wet. I'm not even on the right and you're way to the left of me. Well, on social issues, yes, I am. On immigration, you are. I would agree with that. On immigration, I am. Yeah, you're right. But again, I am as Thatcherite as I ever was.

1:00:48And in the 1980s, I would have been considered not on the far right, but on the definite right. Whereas nowadays, I'm seen by many people who consider themselves on the hard right as a dripping, wet liberal.

1:01:02Francis Foster:And that's because of my opinion is that's because the cultural issues are primal now. They're much more important in many people's eyes, particularly on the right. But actually, with illegal immigration across the political spectrum, as you know, those are the issues that people care most passionately about. Now, of course, the economy is very important, but that is a secondary issue in terms of the way people think now. And so the fact that you are socially liberal on cultural matters therefore makes you a wet because we don't get to the other stuff, really. A wet now means something different from the 1980s because a wet in the 1980s would have meant a sort of left-wing conservative.

1:01:41Yeah. I think nowadays you have to draw a distinction between a capital C conservative and a small c conservative. I remain a capital C conservative and I remain a small C conservative on economics, but not necessarily on.

1:01:56Francis Foster:Yeah. And this is an interesting question, again, one I'm sure you can't answer with any definitiveness. But I sort of see Nigel Farage as coming from the Thatcherite tradition, really. Is that a fair observation? Yes, it is. And Nigel, I also don't think on some cultural issues is as right wing as he sometimes claims. He was a great Thatcher admirer in the 1980s. It was only in 1992 when he foresaw where the European Union was heading and left the Conservative Party. So I think he is a child of Thatcher in many ways, in the same way that I would consider myself a child of Thatcher. I mean, on sort of gay issues, for example, I remember when equal marriage was being discussed in, what was it, 2012 or whatever.

1:02:49He rang me up and he said, now, what do you think of this? He said, I'm trying to make up my mind what I think about it. And so I sort of gave him the benefit of my views and then he went in the opposite direction. But I've never seen it. People think of Nigel Farage as somehow sort of bigoted. And I've never seen that at all. And I don't think she was either.

1:03:10Francis Foster:But it speaks to your point, which is if Margaret Thatcher was in charge of Britain or running a major political party in this country at a time when tens of thousands of people from other countries are coming here illegally, you said yourself she would have been way harder line than what's happening now. And that's where Nigel's at, really. And to be fair to myself, so would I. Yeah. I hold no candle for illegal immigration at all. I believe that all nation states need to control their borders. And I don't see why that should be a controversial statement. I think most people on the left believe that.

1:03:41Most, not all, but most do. I mean, you cannot have open borders, particularly when you're a country. I mean, in Australia, you could argue it's such a massive country. Would it really make that much difference? It would, because most of it is uninhabitable. Well, that is true. but most i mean in britain a country the size of us and with a land mass that is only half the size of france and yet we have the same population i mean i do i do react when people say we're full up here well we're not full up clearly i mean well seven percent of our land mass is built on so it's a facile argument to say that but you cannot accept everybody that wants to come here so i absolutely believe that we have to have rules and regulations it's just how you pitch them and I think anybody that crosses the channel illegally, and it is illegal.

1:04:31People keep saying there's no such thing as illegal immigrants. Well, there is. I mean, of course you can claim asylum, but if you've crossed the channel in a dinghy, that is an illegal act. Of course. And therefore, instead of being put in hotels when you get to this country, there's got to be some sort of deterrent there. Yeah, you should be deported. Yeah, exactly. And I think in the Home Office, what did somebody tell me last night on my radio show that once people actually get here, they aren't even contacted either by the Home Office or the police for maybe years? And you think, well, the argument that, well, we're importing terrorists all the time, and I think that can be an exaggerated argument.

1:05:18But even if only one in 100 is a potential terrorist, we kind of need to root them out. Of course. But none of them should be here. None of them should be here. I'm completely with you on that. But where I think we differ is on legal migration. In what way do you think we differ? In that it doesn't bother me. I mean, when I was doing a podcast recently, the host was sort of talking about, well, whenever he goes out of his front door, all he hears is foreign accents. And I'm thinking, yeah, okay.

1:05:54Francis Foster:Foreign accents or foreign languages? Because it's an important difference. Well, sorry, foreign languages. That's a big difference. Well, it is a big difference. And I say that as someone who speaks a foreign language. The reason is that when people don't speak the same language in the same space, it automatically creates distance. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't speak the language, but they might be speaking to one of their friends who's from the same place. And I find that fascinating. I mean, I want to know where they come from. Yeah. I am not triggered by people speaking foreign languages.

1:06:21Francis Foster:No, but some people are. I know, but you said we differ. No, I think we differ on the level of legal migration. Okay. I think if the economy – the level of legal migration has traditionally always been determined by economic need. And I have absolutely no problem if a particular sector, if they can't find the workers in this country who've got the skills or even with no skills to do the jobs, I have no problem with importing them from elsewhere. We don't differ on that. Well, where do we differ then? I think where we differ is that your understanding of economic need is very different from mine.

1:06:56Francis Foster:What has been happening for – since not 1997 but since the Blair government effectively is the mass importation of low-skill, low-wage workers. We agree on that. right, who are boosting GDP, but they're not boosting GDP per capita at all. In other words, we as a country are becoming poorer, not wealthier. And if you speak to perfectly decent, not xenophobic, not prejudiced people who work in the trades, for example, during the 2000s and afterwards, you know, the Sparkies and all the kind of people who work with their hands, they'd say, I've got no problem with Polish people, but when they come and work for less, and maybe a little bit harder, that causes our wages and our quality of life to go down.

1:07:41I agree with all of that.

1:07:42Francis Foster:Yeah, I don't think we differ. But where I differ with you from what I can see is your concern. You mentioned like Keir Starmer's speech. All the media commentary had a massive meltdown as if he was some Enoch Powell figure. Because what did he say? We're becoming an island of strangers. Ian, I have to tell you, there are millions of people in this country who feel that way because the city in which they live in, it's mostly a city problem, has become completely transformed within one generation. But isn't it interesting that the people who are most concerned about immigration tend to live in areas where there are no immigrants or very few immigrants?

1:08:17Francis Foster:I don't think that, I think it's a talking point that people in the media like to use, but I can explain to you why that makes perfect sense. People who live in the country, let's say, and don't live in a big city, they come to the city every now and again. And they got in the same way that my Russian or Ukrainian relatives come to Britain once every 10 years. And they are shocked by what they see. They are shocked to see a country that they thought looked one way, look a completely different way. You mean look white? Among other things, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. But whiteness is it's not that they think whiteness is important.

1:08:51Francis Foster:Whiteness is a proxy. I think they do think that. That is where we differ. Who thinks that? I think a lot of people find it a problem that – and they define immigrants as people who aren't white. I mean European immigrants, they don't necessarily particularly care about. But I think it does in the end go back to the color of people's skin. And that is where I have a real problem with the language that some politicians use. Robert Jenrick, for example, I called him out last year. I can't remember exactly what he said. But he was using sub-Tommy Robinson type language. Such as? Well, again, I could go back and look at what I wrote about it at the time.

1:09:33But language has consequences. And if you remember when Boris Johnson made his comments about Muslim women wearing a niqab looking like letterboxes, he didn't mean that in a malevolent way. It was a sort of jokey reference. But I know because I had Muslim women ringing me up the next day that they were attacked on the streets. Because by using that kind of simile or metaphor, Boris had effectively given license to people to say things or even do things which they might not have done before. And when Robert Jenrick made a couple of sort of incendiary remarks last year, he was doing exactly the same thing.

1:10:15Now, I think he meant to do it. he was appealing to the basic instincts of people that a leading conservative politician

1:10:24Francis Foster:shouldn't be appealing to in my view well i don't know the incident you're talking about if we come back to the thing that you and i were discussing i think that uh of course a foreign visitor like someone from my family what they react to is the visual change that does not mean that they think whiteness is in itself some kind of important thing it's just the easiest way to see that people that the country has changed. That's all that they mean, right? So if you had a bunch of white people walking around in burqas, that would be just as shocking to them as a bunch of non-white people who are not wearing burqas.

1:10:55Francis Foster:It is a signifier, not entirely accurate, for cultural change in the society. So I think that sometimes these lines get blurred and people think that there is some real importance about everyone being of the same skin color. I don't think it's that really. What I think it is, is a sense that society is changing quickly. Many people find themselves now living in a city which is not the city that they grew up in. Now, look, that's part of history. You have to accept things change. But it has been very, very, very quick. And I understand people being concerned about it. I mean, you know this as well as I do.

1:11:32Francis Foster:More people have come into this country than came, just under the Blair government alone, than came between 1066 and 1950. more people under 13 years, 14 years of a Labour government, and then even more so under the Tories. It's completely unprecedented. That's what people are concerned about, the scale and the pace of the change, and then the impact that has on the communities that people grew up in. And I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing for people to be concerned about. And I don't think conflating it with racism, which does exist, is helpful. Well, I think I have no problem with people being concerned about any aspect of how their communities develop.

1:12:10I just think we have to sometimes watch the way we talk about it. And that's not trying to censor people. Yeah, no, I understand. It really isn't. It's just being decent human beings. But, of course, you and I have no right to review on this because we live in Tunbridge Wells, leafy white Tunbridge Wells that has no immigrants whatsoever. That's what I'm told. Well, actually, well, the thing is... I was going to say, yeah, but Constantine's there.

1:12:30Francis Foster:Well, I'm one of many now because I don't know if you noticed, but you live outside of Tunbridge Wells. I live in the town itself. You live in the ghetto. I live in the ghetto of Tunbridge Wells. During COVID, a lot of people from London moved out. And the demographics of Tunbridge Wells are changing too. And I know people in Tunbridge Wells who just visually notice it. They might not. Some of them are really happy about it. Some of them are really unhappy about it. But people, I think, are allowed to have that view. And this is the point I was making to you about places that are majority one culture and one group.

1:13:03Francis Foster:it's more noticeable there precisely because of this. I think that is true, particularly in some northern and midlands cities and towns where, I mean, I've never been there, but I'm told that Burnley, for example, a quarter of the town is now almost 100 % from a Muslim background. Now, you can say, I mean, if I was really woke and lefty, I would say, what's wrong with that? Right. But I think there is something wrong with that because you've created two societies. And it's a deliberate thing. I don't know whether it's sort of the council have done something, whether different planning rules or whatever.

1:13:45But then again, in North London, you have a Jewish community that congregates in a particular area. It is a natural thing for people from a particular background to congregate together.

1:13:58Francis Foster:But I think... If you have many, many millions of people come in a short period of time, That's where you get the problems that people are concerned about. I mean, there are areas, I think, of South London where you've got a lot of Polish people living in the same area, a lot of Romanian people living in the same area. But that tends not to get the attention that majority Muslim areas get. Because Britain is a historically Christian country, so Christians are easier to integrate, right? This is partly people from a Christian country are going to have more similar values. It's going to be easier for them to adapt.

1:14:28You look at southern Spain and you look at the sort of British, we call them expats. We don't pull British immigrants to Spain, do we? No one here is going to defend British people. They generally don't even attempt to learn the language.

1:14:42Francis Foster:And in Spain, as you know, they have exactly the same concerns about that issue as we do here. They want to kick the tourists out. They don't like as many tourists. Well, tourists, yes. And immigrants. Well, not necessarily, because I think in Spain, there is a great recognition that the British immigrants actually bring quite a lot of money with them. And local economies would find it actually quite difficult to exist without them. So I think there is a little bit of a difference. Anyway, we've gone a long way away from Thatcher, a long way away. But it started with Nigel being a kind of in that tradition is how we got here.

1:15:18But if we look at Thatcher globally, what I find...

1:15:23Francis Foster:He's trying to bring it back to Thatcher now. Yeah, I know. I can't believe I'm doing that. He's become very professional. Yeah, he has. He's got a haircut now now and wearing a shirt, mate. He would have thought that would have happened. But if you look at Thatcher, one of the things that I found really interesting about her is her dealings with the Soviet Union. But I don't think that we can appreciate, seeing here in 2025, actually how powerful the Soviet Union was and the level of threat that we perceived from them. She dealt with them masterfully, didn't she? it's an it really is an interesting story because um she had very little foreign policy experience when she became leader i think she'd been on a couple of skiing holidays she'd been on a lecture tour to the usa a couple of times and that was about it so in the four years from 75 to 79 she made it her business to travel quite a bit and interestingly she went to hungary and yugoslavia two countries where you think well why would she go there because she was determined to see what it was like behind the Iron Curtain.

1:16:23And she had an instinctive hatred of communism, I mean, understandably. And when Brezhnev died, there were two leaders that rapidly succeeded him, Yuri Andropov, who then died after a very short time. She went to the funeral. And And all she met were sort of aged Soviet leaders. She met the successor Chernyenko. And on the flight back to London from the funeral, she said to Charles Pearl, her foreign policy advisor, for goodness sakes, somebody find me a young Russian. And they identified Mikhail Gorbachev as that young, I mean young, was he 53, I think, young Russian. And so he was invited, he was the Minister for Agriculture at the time.

1:17:11So he was invited to come on a visit to the UK. And she invited him for lunch at Chequers. I remember Charles Pohl wrote to her a note saying, do you want to invite him to lunch at Downing Street or your Dacha, i.e. Chequers? And the lunch was supposed to last an hour and a half. They sat down and she turned to him and said, Mr. Gorbachev, you should know that I hate communism. And they had a real set to. I mean, at one point doing this, they fell out so catastrophically that he was looking over there and she was looking over there. But it lasted six hours in the end. And once they'd sort of got the initial sort of outlining of positions out of the way, they had an absolutely brilliant conversation.

1:18:01And she famously said, he's a man I can do business with. She immediately got on the phone to Reagan and said, right, this guy could be the next Russian leader. I want you to meet him. Anyway, then Chonyenko died and he was. And so she introduced him to Reagan. And every time he went to see Reagan, he would either phone her up or stop off in Britain on the way, basically to get the lowdown on what Reagan was likely to say to him. And she played a pivotal role in the whole of that period. and there were difficulties between the various negotiations between the Russians and Americans and she was able to sort of smooth the path in a way.

1:18:45And anyone that says that she played a very small part or no part in the end of the Cold War, they need to read their history books. Because one thing you describe beautifully in the book is the real affection that she had for Reagan, particularly as he got less well and became sicker with dementia and then his inevitable passing. And they tell the story of the funeral. And it just shows the power that these two had, really, because they were instrumental, and there are other factors as well, but in the downfall of the Soviet Union. Absolutely. And look, people say, oh, yeah, well, look how that's turned out.

1:19:26Well, you can't judge things by what subsequently happened. I mean, the nuclear arms race came to an end. And which, when I was a late teenager in my early 20s, I mean, there was a genuine fear of nuclear Armageddon. There were feature films made about it. And people genuinely feared that there would be a nuclear war. Now, together, they averted that. And it was, the slogan for NATO at the time was peace through strength. And it really was. It wasn't sort of a détonne policy towards the Soviet Union. It was saying, well, if you get a weapon, we're going to get two. And it was that that really brought about the end of the Soviet Union because in the end, it couldn't work.

1:20:12The Russians could not spend the money that was needed to do what – and that's why I think where we are nowadays with Putin, And it was 25 % of the Russian GDP is now sort of through the defense industries. And that is unsustainable in the long term. So when people say, well, we need to sort of get out of you supporting Ukraine. No, this is the time when you need to stick at it and turn the screw. Which I imagine Thatcher would have done. Absolutely. And I think she would have actually been really proud of the way this country has stood up for Ukraine. And do you think, what do you think, how would she have dealt with someone like Putin?

1:20:53Because you see the Trump way of dealing with him. I mean, Biden had another way. What do you think would have been the Thatcher way of dealing with a leader like Putin? I have no clue. I mean, I'm not sure. I think she would have come to the conclusion that you can't deal with someone like him and therefore probably wouldn't have tried. and she would have done everything in her power to try and encourage the Soviet, sorry, the Russian people to depose him at some point. I mean, that's fair enough. And then, but if we come now to the end of her career, you know, the economy was in a great place.

1:21:33She transformed the country economically, the roaring 80s, you know, loads of money, all the rest of it, city boys, yuppies. I mean, what went wrong? Poll tax. It wasn't just that, but poll tax and her attitude and her rhetoric about Europe, those were the two things that mostly led to her decline. You can add into the equation the fact that she kept appointing the wrong people to the cabinet. So in her 11 and a half years in power, not once did she have majority support in her cabinet. She kept appointing wets to her cabinet, like people like Chris Patton, William Waldergrave at the end. Why?

1:22:12because she took too much notice of the whips. The whips, and this is where you have to kind of get into the minutiae of Westminster politics, people imagine it's the prime minister that appoints all government ministers. Well, it's not. The prime minister appoints the cabinet in consultation with the chief whip, but it's the chief whip that appoints most of the junior positions. And if the chief whip over the years keeps appointing people from the left of the party, But there isn't a big gene pool for the prime minister to choose from to promote people from junior positions to the cabinet. So she had the wrong chief whip then?

1:22:48Well, I think she had the wrong chief whip almost entirely through her time in office. And at the end, she appointed Sir Geoffrey Howe's chief friend in politics, Tim Renton, to be her chief whip. I mean, she'd already fallen out with Geoffrey Howe. Why on earth? I still don't understand why she did that. I published Tim Renton's memoirs, the first time a chief whip had ever done a book. And he told me, he didn't put this in the book, but he told me that in the first round of balloting for whether she should stay as leader in 1990, he didn't vote for her. Wow. And he didn't see any problem with that and staying on as chief whip.

1:23:26I said, that really is treachery. I said, if you'd resigned and done it honourably, fine, but you didn't. It was almost as if it was the first time he thought about it. And that was emblematic of the problem that she had. So after the first ballot, where it was only four votes from winning, well, she got the majority, but she needed to get plus 15%, she called in her cabinet one by one, rather than doing it all around the cabinet table. And they all basically said the same thing. Well, of course, we'll support you in the second round, Prime Minister, but you're going to lose. And she found this a deeply traumatic experience, as you can imagine.

1:24:07And there was only really one or two, Ken Clark being one. He said, well, unless you resign, I will resign myself. Which was, I mean, fair enough. At least he was being honest. But that was really, that demonstrated to her that she could not continue. And as she said, I've never lost an election. And again, another bit of counterfactual history. If she'd stayed as leader, would she have won in 1992? Again, nobody will know, but I think it's certainly possible. Ian, and I really want to hone in on the poll tax rights because there's lots of people here who would have no idea about it. What is it?

1:24:45What was it? Et cetera. Why was it so divisive? Well, local government funding is not the most exciting political issue. But in the 1970s and 1980s, local government was funded, I mean, predominantly by central government, actually. But a quarter of the funding came from what we call domestic rates. And each property had a rateable value. And every time there was a revision of the rating system, there was a terrible political problem because inevitably everything, all the rates went up. And before she became leader, she was tasked by Ted Heath to come up with an alternative to rates. and in the October 1974 election, they had a policy of saying we will abolish domestic rates, which was a very popular policy.

1:25:36Now, they didn't win. So when she became prime minister, she knew that she was going to have to do something. So there are all sorts of systems that were suggested, a local income tax, a local sales tax, and the poll tax or community charge, as it was known. And that would have meant that every single adult would pay, well the initial rate was going to be 200 pounds a year and that would fund all local government services um that 200 pounds a year even in the 1980s i mean it wasn't a fortune but of course the natural thing for people to say was yeah but what why should a millionaire pay the same as a dustman and that was really at the crux of it about the unfairness anyway as time went on it went up from 200 to 300 to 400 now nigel lawson the chancellor he was never in favor of it but he didn't for some reason didn't veto it and he kept being asked for more subsidies to make sure it would work because once you get to a certain rate if you have i mean you can't tax people without their consent and it got to a level of so it was five people thought 500 pounds oh sorry that that is just taking the piss.

1:26:48And it was a brilliant thing for the left because they had something to get their teeth into. So, well, look, this is Margaret Thatcher's invention. She's wicked for doing this. And it culminated in riots in Trafalgar Square in April 1990. But just as bad as that, they'd taken a decision to trial it in Scotland. Well, you can imagine how Scotland felt about that. and so that I think was the most important reason for her departure because she wouldn't compromise on it.

1:27:24Francis Foster:Ian, we're going to head over to Substack where our audience get to ask you their questions but before we do, what's the one thing about Margaret Thatcher that no one is talking about and should be? Oh my God.

1:27:38Leadership. She knew what leadership was. We have a prime minister now who doesn't understand the meaning of the word. We've had quite a few of those for a while now. Well, I think that's actually not necessarily true. I mean, if we go back to Blair, I think he was a leader. I did completely. He knew what leadership was about. Brown, on some issues, yes, but he was never a charismatic leader. No, no. And the thing is that if you look back to the beginning, to the end of the Second World War, if you go through all of our prime ministers since then, they generally go charismatic one, dull one, charismatic one, dull one.

1:28:17And of course, we associate charisma with leadership. I think Boris Johnson was a leader of sorts and maybe a rather different kind. Charismatic, yeah. And then, of course, I mean, it was supposed to be then Keir Starmer, the dull one would succeed him. But then, of course, we had Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, both of whom you'd say were pretty dull, actually. So we are in a dull period. Can you be a leader without being charismatic? Now, there's an interesting essay question. I mean, Attlee was a leader but had no charisma whatsoever. Attlee would never make it in today's politics, I don't think.

1:28:52So I think it's Thatcher's form of leadership that we should be discussing a lot more and working out how it can be translated in today's politics.

1:29:04Francis Foster:Ian, thanks for coming on. Head on over to Substack where you get to ask Ian your questions. Graham Ward asks, in your opinion, what was Margaret Thatcher's biggest political mistake and how did it affect Britain? Rachel says, can Ian explain why his attitude to Israel is so negative? What?

1:29:37We'll be right back.