Word: thatcherism
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...prophecy proved accurate. Last week Thatcher's Tory Party was resoundingly returned to office, although with a reduced majority. She thus became the first Prime Minister in modern British political history to win three successive general elections. The country's 43.7 million voters, who regard her iron-willed leadership with a mixture of admiration and anxiety, gave the Conservatives a 101-seat majority in the 650-member House of Commons, 43 fewer than the party had won in the 1983 elections. But that was more than sufficient for Thatcher to pursue her "unfinished revolution" in reshaping the political, economic...
...Saturday, Thatcher named a new 21-member Cabinet. Most were holdovers, but there were two surprises. Norman Tebbit, the Conservative Party chairman who had just led the Tories to victory, resigned as Minister Without Portfolio. Though no reason was given, he reportedly wanted to spend more time with his wife, who was badly injured during a 1984 bombing attack by the Irish Republican Army. Cecil Parkinson, who resigned in 1983 in the midst of a sex scandal (he had fathered his secretary's child), rejoined the Cabinet as Energy Secretary...
...mounting a superior campaign. Party strategists focused their effort on the personable Kinnock and his wife Glenys. Cannily avoiding the largely Tory, London-based press, the couple spent long periods campaigning in the provinces, far from London. "The style was vintage Jimmy Carter," noted a Western ambassador in London. Thatcher, by contrast, made the usual one-day campaign forays from the capital. "The Kinnocks were packaged with professionalism and flair," conceded a Conservative politician, "while most of the time we seemed to lack both." Thatcher occasionally stumbled, as when she was asked why she had taken out private medical insurance...
Less than 65 hours before the polls opened, Thatcher flew by private jet to the seven-nation Venice summit, where the televised image of her moving easily among major world leaders was not lost on voters. At his last campaign rally, Kinnock mocked the Venice trip before a crowd in the bleak northern city of Leeds. Said he: "And now the TV spectacular to end all TV spectaculars: Venice. Cinderella on canal. She went there because somebody told her she could walk down the middle of the street...
That final, cocky gesture was typical of Kinnock, who entered the campaign with a reputation as a political lightweight. In just over 3 1/2 years as Labor's leader he had rarely bested Thatcher in their almost weekly jousts during the Prime Minister's question time in the House of Commons, and he had been ridiculed for his often rambling and emotional speeches. He was criticized by radical leftists in the Labor Party for moving it too far toward the center. But his eloquent campaign attacks against Tory parsimony won him respect as a warm, compassionate leader. In one crowd...