been promoted in three of the past four years, I was an aficionado of reshuffles. I knew they began with the most senior Cabinet appointments, which were usually finished by lunchtime. So I expected to hear in the morning if I was to be moved. Lunchtime came – and went. Geoffrey Howe hadn’t been moved, and I hadn’t been summoned. Two o’clock. Three o’clock. I had put a bottle of champagne in the fridge in the hope of remaining in the Treasury. As 3 o’clock passed I asked Carys Evans, my Private Secretary, to fetch it with some glasses. As it was opened, the phone rang.
Carys looked up. ‘It’s Charles Powell,’ she said. ‘Would you please go and see the PM?’
Mrs Thatcher was in her study with Andrew Turnbull, her Principal Private Secretary. She looked fresh, and there was a bloom on her cheeks that I had often seen before. It meant she was relaxed, not on guard, in company with which she was comfortable – and about to bestow a favour. Charles had been smiling too when he showed me upstairs. My heart sank.
‘John,’ she said, ‘hold on to your seatbelt. You are the centrepiece of my changes. Geoffrey has moved on, and I want you to be foreign secretary.’
If I had not been prepared, I am not sure how I would have reacted. As it was, I demurred – for my sake and hers. I believed I owed it to her.
‘Prime Minister, I’m very flattered. But is this a good idea?’
‘I’m very sure it’s a good idea. Why shouldn’t it be?’ She made some disparaging noises about the Foreign Office – not just in connection with its attitude towards Europe. ‘I want someone there who thinks as I do.’
‘Aren’t there others better qualified?’ I said. ‘Douglas Hurd? Nigel Lawson?’
She waved a hand dismissively. No words were necessary.
I persisted. ‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea from your point of view. People will assume I’m there just to carry out your bidding. That won’t be good for either of us. I won’t be offended if you think again.’
She wasn’t having it – and if I’d said no it would have seemed like funk. And how could one possibly turn down such a glittering prize so happily offered? It would certainly have been ungracious. She would have been embarrassed, disappointed and, I think, hurt. My resistance to the appointment melted. Clearly the matter was decided, and there was no alternative Cabinet job left. I remembered the old adage: You don’t negotiate with prime ministers, you say ‘yes’ or you say ‘no’ and take the consequences. I thanked her. We chatted. And I left the room as foreign secretary.
In the corridor I met Charles. He was grinning. ‘What’s the capital of Colombia?’
‘Bogotá,’ I said. ‘Bogotá, Charles. I’ve been there. Years ago.’
I returned to my office at the Treasury to find that the Whitehall bush telegraph had excelled itself. My Private Office and advisers had gathered and a globe of the world had been sellotaped to the top of a bottle of champagne.
The Treasury was agog with excitement, but the atmosphere in my office was part celebration and part wake. Nigel Lawson did not join us, and as I sipped my champagne my mind kept turning to him. How was he feeling? He and Geoffrey had confronted Margaret before Madrid, and Geoffrey had now been moved. And Nigel, who had been chancellor for six years – what would be his next move? The office of foreign secretary, which surely he might have coveted, had been denied him and given to one of his junior ministers.
I had little time to reflect on this. Soon Stephen Wall, who was to be my Principal Private Secretary at the Foreign Office, and Andrew Burns, the Chief Press Officer, came to see me to discuss the preliminary press handling of my appointment.
Afterwards, I returned to the Commons. I knew my appointment would be controversial. As I walked across New Palace Yard I met Norman Fowler, my old boss at the DHSS, and now a close friend.
‘Well, what did you get?’ he asked.
‘Umm … foreign secretary,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit concerned about it.’
‘Crikey,’ said Norman, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Crik-ey!’
The following morning I left Durand Gardens at 7.30 as usual and arrived at the Foreign Office at 8 a.m. I hadn’t told anyone I would arrive so early, and no one was there to meet me except a posse of press photographers. I posed for the inevitable first-day photographs until Sir Patrick Wright, the Permanent Secretary, appeared. He greeted me warmly, a little embarrassed at not having been there when I arrived, and in we went.
Cecil Parkinson said later that ‘there was a feeling Margaret had overdone it’ in appointing me foreign secretary. He was right. But what were her reasons? She’d already said to Willie Whitelaw that in the next generation I would be her successor. Was she now anticipating that day by putting me into a job from which I would be well placed to win any forthcoming leadership election? I cannot know what was really going on in her mind. Nevertheless, it was an extravagant gesture of support.
The move to the Foreign Office changed my life in ways that were not all welcome. I was now considered to be a target for terrorists, and for security reasons I had to move out of my flat in Durand Gardens – let to me by Stan Hurn, an old friend from banking days. But the real disruption was to my lifestyle at Finings, a sanctuary in good and bad days, that changed beyond recognition.
Overnight, security moved in. A caravan disfigured my garden to house a detachment of the Cambridgeshire constabulary, and my garage was surrendered to the same cause. Electronic devices invaded the house and garden like unwanted Daleks. Changes were made to the house and to the perimeter of the garden. An armoured car and protection officers accompanied me every day, and that most precious of gifts – freedom of movement – was gone.
No longer could I walk down the road alone or call in at a shop. I was always accompanied. In time I became accustomed to this, and the protection officers became part of an extended family. At the time, however, Norma and I were desolate at our loss of privacy. The first few weeks of adjustment were miserable.
The Foreign Office were shellshocked at losing Geoffrey after more than five years. And they didn’t expect me as his replacement. Did I really know or care about foreign affairs? Was I to be Mrs Thatcher’s hatchet-man at the Foreign Office? They had reason to fear so, since all they knew of me was that as chief secretary I had questioned the expenditure of their department, as of all others. It was not the best of introductions, but the officials were too professional to let it show.
Their fears about me soon went away when they realised I did not have a mandate to reverse our European policies, and when I negotiated a satisfactory public expenditure settlement. This was not difficult. I saw Norman Lamont, who had taken my place as chief secretary, alone. Norman knew that I had approved the Treasury’s bottom line as chief secretary, and would remember it. Moreover, being familiar with the layout of Treasury expenditure briefs, I could read Norman’s notes upside down as they lay in front of him. We soon reached an agreement. A very good one, too.
My new office was outrageously grand (the staff apologised that the foreign secretary’s room was being redecorated, and would this do?). It was entirely suitable for impressing visitors, and equally unsuitable for serious work. I prefer a plain room to work in, with a large table on which to spread everything out comfortably, and with few distractions. My new office did not meet these specifications, so, except when receiving guests, I decamped to the anteroom next to the Private Office.
I also took an instant dislike to Carlton Gardens, the foreign secretary’s gilded but somewhat faded London home. Geoffrey and Elspeth Howe were in no hurry to move out, and I was in no hurry to move in. I told them to take their time, and settled into a flat at the Foreign Office so I could work longer hours and keep a closer eye on everything that happened. This was thought rather eccentric.
Geoffrey was stunned, almost disbelieving, at what had happened. ‘Incredible, bizarre, astounding,’ was apparently his reaction. The party was equally astonished. When he first appeared in the Commons in his new role as Leader of the House he received a tumultuous reception. It