By Prasun Sonwalkar, IANS
London : We all know that politics is the art of the impossible, but who could have predicted that one fine sunny afternoon a Labour prime minister would exert to welcome and usher Margaret Thatcher through the famous doors of 10, Downing Street?
It actually happened Thursday, and many Labour supporters are still rubbing their eyes in disbelief. For the Labour party, Thatcher and Thatcherism have been the building blocks of electoral success for over a decade, but now times have changed, and how.
Thatcher, who had been Labour’s nemesis for years, had one of the longest tenures as prime minister of Britain between 1979 and 1990.
Thatcher, 81, once hailed as the only man in the British cabinet, is now frail and slow in gait. But when she arrived at her old home in Downing Street in a striking cerise dress, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was at hand to chaperone her through the hallowed doors.
She dropped in for a cup of tea and stayed on for two hours. About 10 to 15 members of staff – mainly building and clerical staff – who were present when she left office in 1990 were also lined up to meet Thatcher, now a Baroness.
The unlikely summit happened within days of Brown paying tributes to her at his monthly press conference. He approvingly said that Thatcher was, like him, a “conviction politician” who was committed to her ideas and idealism.
The significance of Thatcher having tea with Brown at Downing Street in the full glare of publicity goes beyond the ephemeral. Her peregrination towards a Brown-led Downing Street needs to be seen in the context of what Brown has been doing to the Conservative party ever since he took over as Prime Minister in June.
One by one, Brown has enlisted some key Conservative members and advisors by appointing them to key government posts, much to the chagrin of Conservative leader David Cameron. And all in the name of leading a “government of all talents” across party lines.
To cap it all, here was Thatcher, the hallowed high priestess of the Conservative party, accepting the courtesies of a Labour prime minister who seems focussed on decimating the Conservative party of talent as well as prime time television footage.
After private talk with Brown in the study that is still called the Thatcher Room, the two were joined by Brown’s wife Sarah. Brown later escorted her on a tour of Downing Street so that she could see and appreciate the changes since she lived in Britain’s best-known residential address.
Thatcher left clutching a bouquet of flowers, without commenting to reporters who were clearly excited about her visit, and thanked her hosts as she was helped to her car. She arrived and left Downing Street in the full glare of the news media.
There were suggestions that Thatcher had been offered the opportunity to enter via a side-door, but she chose to enter and exit from the famous front door. An aide remarked: “It was her decision – she doesn’t do back doors.”
Brown’s aides were quick to point out that her visit to have tea with Brown should not been as a continuation of Brown’s carrot and stick policy towards the Conservative party. The tea party, they claimed, was arranged soon after Brown took over as prime minister and when Thatcher wrote to him, wishing him the best in office.
Thatcher’s visitation to the Brown household, though unusual, is not unprecedented and does not mean that Lady Thatcher is backing Brown as prime minister. Shortly after Tony Blair came to power in 1997, he also extended an invitation to Thatcher.
Downing Street sources said that one of Brown’s “biggest and earliest political memories” after becoming a legislator was an invitation for him in 1983 to visit Thatcher as the then prime minister in her House of Commons office to discuss a speech he had made.
At the monthly press conference, Brown had described Thatcher as a “conviction politician”, and implied that he, rather than Conservative leader Cameron, carried on her tradition of bold leadership. Brown had said: “I admire the fact that she is a conviction politician. I am a conviction politician like her.”
Gushed BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson: “Who would have believed it? I have just seen Margaret Thatcher walk back through the door of No 10. This – her first visit in seven years – was revealed with great glee by Team Brown.
“Team Thatcher says that she is happy to receive praise from where she can get it. When I suggest to Team Brown that they are without any shame they reply that ‘psychological warfare’ is critical in any election”.
For the record, Conservative sources told IANS that the party was “relaxed” about Thatcher meeting Brown for tea, but at a time when perception is all, television images of Brown courteously escorting Thatcher outside the famous doors of 10, Downing Street, can only get on the nerves of Cameron and his beleaguered Conservative party.