Abstract
This article will examine how Margaret Thatcher utilised the Prime Ministerial power of Cabinet ministerial appointment between 1979 and 1990. The article will utilise the Norton taxonomy on the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP) to determine the ideological disposition (non-Thatcherite versus Thatcherite) of her Cabinet members across her eleven years in office. It will assess the ideological trends in terms of appointments, promotions and departures from Cabinet and it will use archival evidence to explore the advice given to Thatcher to assist her decision-making. Through this process the article will demonstrate how Thatcher was more ideologically balanced than academics have traditionally acknowledged when discussing her Cabinet selections. Moreover, the article will also demonstrate the significance attached to media presentation skills to her decision-making, thus challenging the emphasis on ideology as a dominant determinant of Cabinet selection.
Highlights
This article contributes to the academic literature on the political leadership of Margaret Thatcher, focusing on the powers of patronage that a Prime Minister possesses in terms of Cabinet selection
Norton identified the ideological composition of the Parliamentary Conservative Party (PCP), in order to determine whether her leadership had acted as a ‘transmission belt’ for the creation of a Thatcherite PCP and the erosion of one-nation Conservative sentiment (Norton 1990)
Prospective cabinet members should have one particular qualification: they must not be ‘one of us’ (Thatcher, MSS, CAC, ‘Wolfson notes: Ministerial Changes’, THCR 1/14/14 f129, 22 August 1985). What of her final term of office between 1987 and 1990? What is most revealing from using the Norton taxonomy in relation to Cabinet appointments is the discovery that her final Cabinet was not that dissimilar to her first Cabinet in terms of ideological balance—i.e., just as she entered office with a Cabinet in which the non-Thatcherites were double in number than the Thatcherites the same was true in November 1990, as she had six non-Thatcherites as compared to three Thatcherites
Summary
This article contributes to the academic literature on the political leadership of Margaret Thatcher, focusing on the powers of patronage that a Prime Minister possesses in terms of Cabinet selection. In. answering these questions, the article will use archival evidence to gain insights into the factors shaping her decision-making on Cabinet selection. Answering these questions, the article will use archival evidence to gain insights into the factors shaping her decision-making on Cabinet selection These questions demonstrate how patronage can be seen as a tool of party management—i.e., to what extent should the Prime Minister respond to their factions’ expectation that they should be dominant numerically within the ministerial and Cabinet ranks? This article attempts to identify the evidence to support the claim that Thatcher sought ideological balance, as against the academic assumptions that she failed to do so. Thatcher was the ‘monopoly supplier’ of a good in short supply for which there was an enormous demand (King and Allen 2010, p. 251)
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