255. Maggie: lioness or poodle?

Maggie Thatcher in 1987 pulled off a trick that had eluded all other British Prime Ministers of the twentieth century: she won three general elections in a row. Even more, she won a second Commons landslide down from the 144 seats in 1983, but still massive at 102 seats. It was a remarkable feat, to set alongside her being the first woman Prime Minister of Britain, though she always preferred to present herself as the first scientist.

With that huge majority, she seemed well placed to pursue her policy agenda to make Britain great again. But that’s where she ran into problems. This week, we’re going to talk about what the obstacles to her were in foreign affairs, before turning to the domestic ones next week.

She had three main paths to choose between: she could go all in on the Atlantic Alliance with the US, banking on the special relationship; she could go with the Commonwealth, using that association of former imperial possessions to rebuild British global power; or she could throw the country’s lot in with Europe, sacrificing some British sovereignty to the EEC, in return, as Harold Macmillan had written quarter of a century earlier, for sharing in the sovereignty the other nations had given up.

The problem was, as experience would show, that the special relationship with the US had become deeply one-sided, with the US treating Britan as very much a junior partner (which, to be fair, it was). While her backers praised her for standing up against those in parliament who resented granting the US permission to fly bombing raids against Libya from British bases, calling her a lioness in a den of Daniels, those opponents regarded her as a poodle doing the bidding of the American president. As for the Commonwealth, this loose association of nations with no real structure for taking or acting on decisions, was never going to get Britain anywhere. And when it came to Europe, Thatcher grew increasingly sceptical about the EEC as time went on, resenting any granting of authority to it outside the purely economic area.

That, sadly, left Thatcher with no real option for taking things forward. Majority or not, she was increasingly boxed in. Lioness or poodle, she found her way blocked in every direction.

Illustration: 'You lead and I'll follow': Thatcher dancing with Reagan, a special relationship in which the US calls all the shots. Photo by Charles Tasnadi from the Globe and Mail.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License