The Emergence of an Outsider

Abstract

Mrs Margaret Thatcher is the first outsider to reach 10 Downing Street since Bonar Law. Several others — Ramsay MacDonald, Ted Heath, Jim Callaghan — may have started from the wrong side of the tracks. But long before they reached the pinnacle of the political system all of them had been welcomed to the Club. Not so Mrs Thatcher. She may have joined the Carlton Club as its first female member after election to the leadership of the Tory Party: but in the true sense she is not a joiner. No matter how long she remains at Downing Street, she will never be absorbed by the Establishment.