I really like Sir Geoffrey Howe, as Margaret Thatcher’s first Chancellor of the Exchequer he helped change the economy, shattering the policies that helped make the United Kingdom the sick man of Europe despite a lot of opprobrium at the time.

By making his resignation about our relationship with our European neighbours and thus Mrs Thatcher’s ousting about that led to an emotional melodrama that affected the Tory party for decades and as a result the country too given the psychological hold Mrs Thatcher had on the party (and I say that as a Thatcherite.)

Her interventions in 1997 and 2001 Tory leadership elections denied the pro-European Kenneth Clarke the leadership, despite him being a staunch Thatcherite whilst serving in her cabinet. She behaved towards her successor in a way that was much worse than her predecessor Sir Edward Heath behaved towards her after she ousted him.

Every Tory Prime Minister between 1979 and 2019 had their premiership ended or destroyed because of the UK’s relation with Europe, I think that would have been different had Howe tried to oust Thatcher over the economy and the poll tax. The immutable political law of not messing the taxation of the houses of the voters never ends well would have applied to the post Thatcher discourse.

TSE