𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham casts himself as the anti-Thatcher, a prime minister on a mission to reverse the “wrong turns” he believes occurred on her watch. But Caroline Slocock, who saw the iconic Conservative leader up close when she became the first woman to serve as a PM’s private secretary, argues Mr Burnham could learn from the Iron Lady.

Britain has cycled through seven prime ministers in a decade but Margaret Thatcher was in Number 10 for 11 years – the seventh longest-serving on record. Ms Slocock believes she stands out as a PM who “really did get a grip”. She mastered details “when there was a big strategic thing that she wanted to deal with” and she put the civil service to work to deliver her goals.

One of Mr Burnham’s first acts was to launch Number 10 North – a move Ms Slocock regards with wariness. She has seen Downing Street “balloon” under successive prime ministers and knows how the Government machine grows slow and sclerotic when a PM micro-manages. She warns: “What the Prime Minister needs to do is really set the clear priorities for government… My worry for him is that Number 10 North will drag him into a lot of detail.”

Ms Slocock still talks of her time at the heart of Government with a sense of surprise. “I never expected to end up as a civil servant,” she says. Her father was a printer and her mother was a secretary, and it was only when studying for a PhD on American fiction of the Vietnam War – and looking at a bleak job market in higher education as a result of funding cuts – that she was encouraged to apply for the civil service fast stream. “I didn’t come from Oxbridge, which in those days was almost a prerequisite,” she remembers. “And I was a woman, which frankly didn’t help.”

But she got through and, after an exciting time working for Employment Secretary David Young, her name was put forward as a potential private secretary for the PM. “It was said that Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have a female private secretary,” she recalls.

She was no fan of the Tory prime minister but in Downing Street she encountered a world leader who went out of her way to put at her ease. The woman renowned for her role in forcing the collapse of Communism came down the stairs “slightly awkwardly” with a container of blue hyacinths. “Caroline,” she said. “I brought these down for you, I thought you’d like them.”

The PM announced she wanted her to have the job and then introduced her to the other private secretaries. Ms Slocock would be by her side for her last 18 months in power. During this time she watched as “her own strengths became her own weaknesses”. The Tory leader was intent on driving through the poll tax and her once close relationship with her former Chancellor and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe had soured perilously. “I think they probably both hated each other,” she says. “I don’t know, but I think she really, really distrusted him.”

And relations with the MPs in the Commons were dangerously strained. “I think she felt that she [had] won three elections and she didn’t need to suck up to her MPs… She should have, because they turned against her, in effect, and that’s how she was ousted.”

Ms Slocock witnessed the close of a defining era in British politics first-hand when Thatcher delivered her resignation statement to the Cabinet. She remembers: “I was the only other woman in the room when she resigned…I asked to go in, and this extraordinarily personal situation unfolded, and it was just really painful to watch it… She’d drafted her resignation statement, and she was determined to read it out. But her voice kept on breaking. She couldn’t read it out, she was so upset at the situation – in a state of deep shock and anger, I think, at the men round the table… Eventually she got to the end, and she said, ‘I don’t think you’ll have heard that, so I’ll read it again.’ And she did the whole thing again with this extraordinary emotion in her voice, and her voice failing her.”

She recalls cabinet ministers weeping and she, too, started to cry: “These relationships had broken down and it was just an extraordinarily difficult thing to witness.”

Ms Slocock went on to serve as a private secretary to John Major and work at the Treasury, as well as winning the post of chief executive of the Equal Opportunities Commission. She is director of the Civil Exchange think-tank and has reflected on the best and the worst of Whitehall in action, most recently penning Bad Government (And How to Make It Better). Though it is fashionable in some circles to refer to civil servants as part of a change-resistant “blob”, she argues this is a mistake and that – as Thatcher demonstrated – their collective power can be unleashed to turn a prime minister’s priorities into reality.

“The critical lever is the civil service,” she says. “It’s how you get stuff done. There are half a million people there who are at your service, and many more beyond that in the public sector. The important thing to do is to build a relationship of trust and provide a very clear sense of purpose about what needs to be done.”

If Thatcher had not resigned, does she think she would have taken the party into yet another election? “To get a fourth term would have been extraordinary,” she comments. “And I think she probably wouldn’t have got it, and she probably would have known that. But nobody wants to give up power. Power is extremely seductive.”

She has ready examples of how Thatcher could display leadership at a global level: “She went to the UN and she asked the world to cooperate together to end global warming – an extraordinary thing to do… She had that kind of ability to pick up causes that no one else would and thrust them forward.” And, when the Falklands crisis erupted: “She instantly went into battle mode and knew what she had to do, whereas others might have faltered… These are qualities that we, I’d like to see more of. She wasn’t focused on the day-to-day news headlines in the way that I think increasingly people are.”

Part of the “secret of her success”, she argues, was the enormity of effort the PM put into every activity. “She said to me, ‘Caroline, it takes 12 hours of work to prepare a speech.’… She would lock out whole swathes of time to work on them late into the evening, with a glass of whisky. Getting her voice right for her was incredibly important… She would always make sure she put on a good show.” And though she could be “terrifying with her ministers”, she “treated the people around her with dignity and respect”.

The challenges facing Britain today, she argues, require a type of leadership which brings people together and unlocks creativity in pursuit of a common purpose: “There are underlying problems there that need to be solved, and they need to be solved by collaboration across society.” Taking action early to ensure serious problems are prevented, she argues, is the “only sustainable way” to get the welfare bill and the costs of the NHS down”.

And is there anyone in the Commons today who reminds her of Britain’s first female prime minister? Her answer may make Conservatives splutter. “I just think that Angela Rayner has an extraordinary authenticity, and the other thing about her, which is powerful for her, is that she says it straight, she speaks human. Having the confidence to be yourself is a great quality in a Prime Minister.”

• Caroline Slocock’s new book, Bad Government (And How to Make it Better), is published by Biteback and is out now.