Ann Widdecombe on Margaret Thatcher and John Major (2009)

An interview with Ann Widdecombe in which she reflects on two Prime Ministers she served under and two different approaches the House of Commons voting lobby.
Ann was the Member of Parliament for Maidstone and The Weald from 1987 to 2010. She served in a number of ministerial roles in John Major's government, including Minister for Prisons and Minister of State for Employment and was Shadow Home and Shadow Health Secretary under William Hague when he was party leader.
This clip was part of a short student film made in 2009. It was primarily focused around her upcoming retirement and was filmed in Ann's office in the One Parliament Street building.
More recently, Ann came out of political retirement to take up a role as Member of the European Parliament for South West England, representing the Brexit Party.

[@uptoapoint7157]

I remember 1979. The Labour government was run by the unions. Domestic coal was 3 times the price of imported coal but British households were forced to pay higher prices to keep uneconomic pits open. It was not Thatcher v The miners but Unions v the public.

[@stevebbuk]

I was slightly surprised by some of Ann's points because we surely have a generation now who are stuck renting, we shouldn't have sold off the state oil company and the percentage of people owning shares directly is relatively small. However I do agree with the thrust and the concept of customer service which was lacking in the 1970s. As for John Major he may well have single-handedly won the 1992 General Election with his soap box, but he lost his political acumen (ironically as did his predecessor) with the closure of the Nottinghamshire mines and the VAT on fuel.

[@danielebowman]

Agree with some of that. The issue with renting and house prices is a global one. All parties left and right adopted the neo-liberal model of growth, import low wage workers, don't keep manufacturing at home, drive down prices for that big TV, keep GDP growing even though only the super rich benefit and the middle class is shrinking.

[@stevebbuk]

@@danielebowman Yet the irony is that the poor in Western countries have never been better off materially; it's just the rich got richer at a faster rate.

[@rah62]

I would be curious to know Ann's opinion of Thatcher's complete lack of interest in advancing other females in her government.

[@DanYule55]

She’d probably say she didn’t care what gender the ministers were, as long as they were the right people for the job.

[@rah62]

@@DanYule55 Which would be the politically correct thing for her to say, but let's be honest - she benefitted from an unspoken affirmative-action program in her decades as an MP, because there was always an unspoken rule back then that there had to be one woman in the cabinet (or shadow cabinet), and she was "the" woman for a long period of time. Ted Heath didn't even want her in his cabinet but he had to because she was "the" woman. It's a shame that after benefitting from that, she got to be PM and drew up the rope ladder so no women could follow.