Word: keeps
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...family's life-style is comfortable, conventional, squarely middle class. Thatcher has few close friends and no real intellectual interests outside politics. She reads primarily "to keep up," as she puts it, much prefers Rudyard Kipling to T.S. Eliot, rarely dines out or sees a play. Her only hobby is collecting Royal Crown Derby china. At the end of a day, she and Denis like to relax over a drink: hers is Scotch, neat and usually just...
Unlike a U.S. President, a British Prime Minister is the first among supposed equals in the Cabinet. Cajolery is as vital a quality as conviction, and some Tories wonder whether Thatcher has the skills necessary to keep dissident ministers in line. Because of her authoritarian air, she sometimes appears to be rather like a headmistress dealing sternly with rowdy students. In discussions around the shadow cabinet table, says one associate, "she can be very sharp, steely in cutting somebody short if she has lost interest in what is being said...
...rhetorical force of her convictions, some Tory colleagues accuse her of inconsistency. Says one prospective Cabinet appointee: "You cannot predict from one set of convictions what her views would be on another series of topics. Often her views do not add up to a single position. She tends to keep her opinions in separate compartments." And, he adds, "there is an element of impetuousness of judgment, which might result from being a woman...
...economic situation," says one of them. But that is unlikely to prevent her from lecturing her counterparts in Western Europe. ("God help them," says one colleague.) Another potential Cabinet member sums her up: "She is a powerful lady, but manageable by her colleagues. They believe they can keep her from lurching too far right...
...couldn't get the whole of Europe, but at least we've got half of Europe free. At least my son does not have to go and fight as his father had to fight. Surely that is the most valuable thing of all, the reason for keeping Europe together . . . I loathe the bureaucratic trivialities of the E.E.C., and tell them so. What is important is to keep competition genuine and free...