Following success at the 1979 election whose party conference speeech included the lines 'you turn if you want to, the lady's not for turning'?
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United_Kingdom_general_election,_1979.txt The_lady's_not_for_turning.txt Margaret_Thatcher.txt David_Cameron.txt
United Kingdom general election, 1979 The lady's not for turning Margaret Thatcher David Cameron
The United Kingdom general election of 1979 was held on 3 May 1979 to elect 635 members to the British House of Commons.  The Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher, ousted the incumbent Labour government of James Callaghan with a parliamentary majority of 44 seats.  The election was the first of four consecutive election victories for the Conservative Party, and Thatcher became the United Kingdom and Europe's first female elected head of government.

The previous parliamentary term had begun in October 1974, when Harold Wilson led Labour to a majority of three seats, but within 18 months he had resigned as prime minister to be succeeded by James Callaghan, and within a year the government's narrow parliamentary majority had gone.  Callaghan had made agreements with the Liberals, the Ulster Unionists, as well as the Scottish and Welsh nationalists in order to remain in power. However, on 28 March 1979 following the defeat of the Scottish devolution referendum, Thatcher tabled a motion of no confidence in James Callaghan's Labour government, which was passed by just one vote (311 to 310), triggering a general election five months before the end of the government's term.

The Labour campaign was hampered by the series of industrial disputes and strikes during the Winter of 1978-79, known as the Winter of Discontent and the party focused its campaign on support for the National Health Service and full employment. After intense media speculation, Callaghan had announced early in the autumn of 1978 that a general election would not take place that year having received private polling data which suggested a parliamentary majority was unlikely. 

The Conservative campaign employed the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi and pledged to control inflation as well as curbing the power of the trade unions.  The Liberal Party was damaged by allegations that its former leader Jeremy Thorpe had been involved in a homosexual affair, and had conspired to murder his former lover.

The Liberals were now being led by David Steel, meaning that all three major parties entered the election with a new leader.

The election saw a 5.2% swing from Labour to the Conservatives, the largest swing since the 1945 election, which Clement Attlee won for Labour.  Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, and Callaghan was replaced as Labour leader by Michael Foot in 1980.  Results for the election were broadcast live on the BBC, and presented by David Dimbleby, Robert McKenzie, David Butler and Robin Day.   It was the first  general election to feature Rick Wakeman's song Arthur on the BBC's coverage.

Timeline

After suffering a vote of no confidence on 28 March 1979, the Prime Minister James Callaghan was forced to announce that he would request a dissolution of Parliament to onset a general election. The key dates were as follows:

Background

Britain's economy during the 1970s was so weak that Labour minister James Callaghan warned his fellow Cabinet members in 1974 of the possibility of "a breakdown of democracy", telling them, "If I were a young man, I would emigrate."  Callaghan succeeded Harold Wilson as Labour Prime Minister after the latter's surprise resignation in April 1976. By March 1977 Labour had become a minority government after several by-election defeats, and from March 1977 to August 1978 Callaghan governed by an agreement with the Liberal Party through the Lib-Lab pact. Callaghan had considered calling an election in the autumn of 1978,  but ultimately decided that imminent tax cuts, and a possible economic upturn in 1979, could favour his party at the polls by holding the election later. Although published opinion polls suggested that he might win,  private polls commissioned by the Labour Party from MORI had suggested the two main parties had much the same level of support.

However, events would soon overtake the Labour government. A series of industrial disputes in the winter of 1978–79, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent", led to widespread strikes across the country and seriously hurt Labour's standings in the polls. When the Scottish National Party (SNP) withdrew support for the Scotland Act 1978, a vote of no confidence was held and passed by one vote on 28 March 1979, forcing Callaghan to call a general election. As the previous election had been held in October 1974, Labour could have held on until the autumn of 1979 if it had not been for the lost confidence vote.

Margaret Thatcher had won her party's 1975 leadership election over former leader Edward Heath.

David Steel had replaced Jeremy Thorpe as leader of the Liberal Party in 1976, after allegations of homosexuality and conspiracy to murder his former lover forced Thorpe to resign. The Thorpe affair led to a fall in the Liberal vote after what was thought to be a breakthrough in the February 1974 election.

Campaign

This was the first election since 1959 to feature three new leaders for the main political parties. The three main parties all advocated cutting income tax. Labour and the Conservatives did not specify the exact thresholds of income tax they would implement but the Liberals did, claiming they would have income tax starting at 20% with a top rate of 50%. 

Labour

The Labour campaign reiterated their support for the National Health Service and full employment and focused on the damage they believed the Conservatives would do to the country. In an early campaign broadcast, Callaghan asked: "The question you will have to consider is whether we risk tearing everything up by the roots". Towards the end of Labour's campaign Callaghan claimed a Conservative government "would sit back and just allow firms to go bankrupt and jobs to be lost in the middle of a world recession" and that the Conservatives were "too big a gamble to take". 

The Labour Party manifesto "The Labour way is the better way", was issued on 6 April. Callaghan presented four priorities:
#(i) "We must keep a curb on 'inflation and prices"; 
#(ii) "we will carry forward the task of putting into practice the new framework to improve industrial relations that we have hammered out with the TUC" 
#(iii) "we give a high priority to working for a return to full employment"; 
#(iv) "we are deeply concerned to enlarge people's freedom"; and "we will use Britain's influence to strengthen world peace and defeat world poverty".

Conservatives

The Conservatives campaigned on economic issues, pledging to control inflation and to reduce the increasing power of the trade unions who supported the mass strikes. They also employed the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi who created the Labour Isn't Working poster for them. The Conservative campaign was focused on gaining support from traditional Labour voters who had never voted Conservative before, first-time voters and people who had voted Liberal in 1974.  Thatcher's advisers, Gordon Reece and Timothy Bell, co-ordinated their presentation with the editor of The Sun, Larry Lamb. The Sun printed a series of articles by disillusioned former Labour ministers (Reginald Prentice, Richard Marsh, Lord George-Brown, Alfred Robens and Lord Chalfont) detailing why they had switched their support to Thatcher. She explicitly asked Labour voters for their support when she launched her campaign in Cardiff, claiming that Labour was now extreme.  

The Conservative Manifesto, issued on 11 April, reflected Thatcher's views. It promised five major policies:
#"(i) to restore the health of our economic and social life, by controlling inflation and striking a fair balance between the rights and duties of the trade union movement; 
#(ii) to restore incentives so that hard work pays, success is rewarded and genuine new jobs are created in an expanding economy; 
#(iii) to uphold Parliament and the rule of law; 
#(iv) to support family life, by helping people to become home-owners, raising the standards of their children's education and concentrating welfare services on the effective support of the old, the sick, the disabled and those who are in real need; and 
#(v) to strengthen Britain's defences and work with our allies to protect our interests in an increasingly threatening world." 

An analysis of the election showed that the Conservatives gained an 11% swing among the skilled working-class (the C2s) and a 9% swing amongst the unskilled working class (the DEs). 

Results

In the end, the overall swing of 5.2% was the largest since 1945 and gave the Conservatives a workable majority of 43 for the country's first female Prime Minister. The Conservative victory in 1979 also marked a change in government which would continue for 18 years until the Labour victory in 1997. The SNP saw a massive collapse in support, losing nine of their 11 MPs. The Liberals had a disappointing election; their scandal-hit former leader Jeremy Thorpe lost his seat in North Devon to the Conservatives.

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 All parties shown.

N.B. The Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party had folded in 1978. Of its three MPs, two joined the Ulster Unionist Party (one held his seat, the other lost to the Democratic Unionist Party) and the third defended and held his seat for the United Ulster Unionist Party.

James Kilfedder had been previously elected as an Ulster Unionist MP, but left the party, defending and holding his seat as an Independent Ulster Unionist. He subsequently founded the Ulster Popular Unionist Party but did not use that label in this election.

Votes summary

Seats summary

Incumbents defeated

Conservative

*Teddy Taylor (Glasgow Cathcart)
*Andrew MacKay (Birmingham Stechford) - By-election win
*Richard Page (Workington) - By-election win
*Tim Smith (Ashfield) - By-election win
*Robin Hodgson (Walsall North) - By-election win

Labour

*Geoffrey Edge (Aldridge-Brownhills)
*Eric Moonman (Basildon)
*Alfred Bates (Bebington and Ellesmere Port)
*Roderick MacFarquhar (Belper)
*Raymond Carter (Birmingham Northfield) - Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office
*Tom Litterick (Birmingham Selly Oak)
*Syd Tierney (Birmingham Yardley) - President of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers
*Caerwyn Roderick (Brecon & Radnor)
*Ronald Thomas (Bristol North West)
*George Rodgers (Chorley)
*Sydney Irving (Dartford)
*William Molloy (Ealing North)
*Bryan Davies (Enfield North)
*John Watkinson (Gloucestershire West)
*John Ovenden (Gravesend)
*Alan Lee Williams (Hornchurch) - Parliamentary Private Secretary to Roy Mason
*Shirley Williams (Hertford and Stevenage) - Secretary of State for Education and Science
*Arnold Shaw (Ilford South)
*Terence Walker (Kingswood)
*Bruce Grocott (Lichfield and Tamworth) - Parliamentary Private Secretary
*Margaret Beckett (Lincoln) - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Education and Science
*Edward Loyden (Liverpool Garston)
*Ivor Clemitson (Luton East)
*Brian Sedgemore (Luton West)
*John Desmond Cronin (Loughborough)
*John Tomlinson (Meriden) - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at Foreign Office
*Doug Hoyle (Nelson and Colne)
*Edward Bishop (Newark) - Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
*Maureen Colquhoun (Northampton North)
*Evan Luard (Oxford)
*Arthur Latham (Paddington)
*Michael Ward (Peterborough)
*Frank Judd (Portsmouth North) - Minister for Overseas Development
*Ronald Atkins (Preston North)
*Hugh Jenkins (Putney) - Minister for the Arts
*Robert Bean (Rochester and Chatham)
*Michael Noble (Rossendale)
*William Price (Rugby)
*Bryan Gould (Southampton Test)
*Raphael Tuck (Watford)
*Helene Hayman (Welwyn and Hatfield)
*Gerald Fowler (The Wrekin) - Minister for Education and Science

Liberal

*Jeremy Thorpe (North Devon)
*Emlyn Hooson (Montgomeryshire)
*John Pardoe (North Cornwall)

Scottish National Party

*Douglas Henderson (East Aberdeenshire)
*Andrew Welsh (South Angus)
*Iain MacCormick (Argyll)
*Hamish Watt (Banffshire)
*Margaret Ewing (East Dunbartonshire)
*George Thompson (Galloway)
*Winnie Ewing (Moray and Nairn)
*Douglas Crawford (Perth & East Perthshire)
*George Reid (Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire)

Plaid Cymru

*Gwynfor Evans (Carmarthen)

Scottish Labour Party

*Jim Sillars (South Ayrshire) - Former Labour MP

Ulster Vanguard

*William Craig (Belfast East) "The lady's not for turning" was a phrase used by Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, in her speech to the Conservative Party Conference on 10 October 1980.  The term has thus been applied as a name to the speech in its entirety.  It is considered a defining speech in Thatcher's political development,  becoming something of a Thatcherite motto. 

The phrase made reference to Thatcher's refusal to perform a "U-turn" in response to opposition to her liberalisation of the economy, which some commentators and Ted Heath had urged,  mainly because unemployment had risen to 2 million by the autumn of 1980 from 1.5 million the previous year and the economy was in recession,  exceeding 3 million by the time the recession ended in 1982. 

It was written by the playwright Sir Ronald Millar, who had been Thatcher's speech-writer since 1973, and was a pun on the 1948 play The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry, although Thatcher missed the reference herself.    Millar had intended the "you turn if you want to" line, which preceded it, to be the most popular, and it received an ovation itself, but it was "the lady's not for turning" that received the headlines. At the time, Thatcher was already being referred to as the "Iron Lady".

The speech as a whole was very warmly received at the conference, and received a five-minute standing ovation.

Excerpt Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher,  ( Roberts; 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013) was a British stateswoman and politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century and the first woman to have held the office. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As Prime Minister, she implemented policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.

Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election to become Leader of the Opposition and became the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became Prime Minister after winning the 1979 general election.

On moving into , Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives intended to reverse high unemployment and Britain's struggles in the wake of the Winter of Discontent and an ongoing recession. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until victory in the 1982 Falklands War and the recovering economy brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983.

Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987. During this period her support for a Community Charge (referred to as the "poll tax") was widely unpopular, and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership. After retiring from the Commons in 1992, she was given a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the county of Lincolnshire, which entitled her to sit in the House of Lords. After a series of small strokes in 2002, she was advised to withdraw from public speaking. Despite this, she managed to prerecord a eulogy to Ronald Reagan prior to his death, which was broadcast at his funeral in 2004.  In 2013, she died of another stroke in London at the age of 87.

Early life and education

Thatcher was born Margaret Hilda Roberts on 13 October 1925, in Grantham, Lincolnshire. Her father was Alfred Roberts, originally from Northamptonshire, and her mother was Beatrice Ethel (née Stephenson) from Lincolnshire. She spent her childhood in Grantham, where her father owned two grocery shops. She and her older sister Muriel (1921–2004) were raised in the flat above the larger of the two, on North Parade. Her father was active in local politics and the Methodist church, serving as an alderman and a local preacher, and brought up his daughter as a strict Wesleyan Methodist  attending the Finkin Street Methodist Church. He came from a Liberal family but stood – as was then customary in local government – as an Independent. He was Mayor of Grantham in 1945–46 and lost his position as alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950.

Margaret Roberts attended Huntingtower Road Primary School and won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School. Her school reports showed hard work and continual improvement; her extracurricular activities included the piano, field hockey, poetry recitals, swimming and walking. She was head girl in 1942–43.  In her upper sixth year she applied for a scholarship to study chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, but she was initially rejected and was offered a place only after another candidate withdrew. Roberts arrived at Oxford in 1943 and graduated in 1947 with Second-Class Honours in the four-year Chemistry Bachelor of Science degree, specialising in X-ray crystallography under the supervision of Dorothy Hodgkin. Her dissertation was on the structure of the antibiotic gramicidin.  Even while working on chemistry, she was already thinking towards law and politics. She was reportedly more proud of becoming the first Prime Minister with a science degree than the first female Prime Minister. 

Roberts became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946. She was influenced at university by political works such as Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944), which condemned economic intervention by government as a precursor to an authoritarian state. After graduating, Roberts moved to Colchester in Essex to work as a research chemist for BX Plastics. In 1948 she applied for a job at ICI, but was rejected after the personnel department assessed her as "headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self-opinionated".  Roberts joined the local Conservative Association and attended the party conference at Llandudno in 1948, as a representative of the University Graduate Conservative Association. One of her Oxford friends was also a friend of the Chair of the Dartford Conservative Association in Kent, who were looking for candidates. Officials of the association were so impressed by her that they asked her to apply, even though she was not on the Conservative Party's approved list: she was selected in January 1951, aged 25, and added to the approved list post ante. At a dinner following her formal adoption as Conservative candidate for Dartford in February 1951 she met Denis Thatcher, a successful and wealthy divorced businessman, who drove her to her Essex train. In preparation for the election Roberts moved to Dartford, where she supported herself by working as a research chemist for J. Lyons and Co. in Hammersmith, part of a team developing emulsifiers for ice cream. 

Early political career

In the 1950 and 1951 general elections, Roberts was the Conservative candidate for the safe Labour seat of Dartford. The local party selected her as its candidate because, though not a dynamic public speaker, Roberts was well-prepared and fearless in her answers; another prospective candidate recalled that "Once she opened her mouth, the rest of us began to look rather second-rate". She attracted media attention as the youngest and the only female candidate. She lost on both occasions to Norman Dodds, but reduced the Labour majority by 6,000, and then a further 1,000. During the campaigns, she was supported by her parents and by Denis Thatcher, whom she married in December 1951.  Denis funded his wife's studies for the bar; she qualified as a barrister in 1953 and specialised in taxation. Later that same year their twins Carol and Mark were born, delivered by Caesarean section.

The marriage led to her being referred to as "Mrs Denis Thatcher" – now considered dated  – by such official sources as selection minutes,  travel itineraries,  and society publications such as Queen, even after her election as a Member of Parliament, after which she preferred "Mrs Margaret Thatcher". 

Member of Parliament: 1959–70

In 1954, Thatcher was defeated when she sought selection to be the Conservative party candidate for the Orpington by-election of January 1955. She chose not to stand as a candidate in the 1955 general election, in later years stating "I really just felt the twins were ... only two, I really felt that it was too soon.  I couldn't do that." Afterwards, Thatcher began looking for a Conservative safe seat and was selected as the candidate for Finchley in April 1958 (narrowly beating Ian Montagu Fraser). She was elected as MP for the seat after a hard campaign in the 1959 election.  Benefiting from her fortunate result in a lottery for backbenchers to propose new legislation, Thatcher's maiden speech was in support of her private member's bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960), requiring local authorities to hold their council meetings in public.  In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching as a judicial corporal punishment.

Thatcher's talent and drive caused her to be mentioned as a future Prime Minister in her early 20s although she herself was more pessimistic, stating as late as 1970 that "There will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime—the male population is too prejudiced."  In October 1961 she was promoted to the front bench as Parliamentary Undersecretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in Harold Macmillan's administration. Thatcher was the youngest woman in history to receive such a post, and among the first MPs elected in 1959 to be promoted. After the Conservatives lost the 1964 election she became spokeswoman on Housing and Land, in which position she advocated her party's policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses. She moved to the Shadow Treasury team in 1966 and, as Treasury spokeswoman, opposed Labour's mandatory price and income controls, arguing that they would produce effects contrary to those intended and distort the economy.

By 1966, party leaders viewed Thatcher as a potential Shadow Cabinet member. James Prior proposed her as a member after the Conservatives' 1966 defeat, but party leader Edward Heath and Chief Whip Willie Whitelaw chose Mervyn Pike as the shadow cabinet's sole woman member.

At the Conservative Party Conference of 1966 she criticised the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism", arguing that lower taxes served as an incentive to hard work. Thatcher was one of the few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality.  She voted in favour of David Steel's bill to legalise abortion,  as well as a ban on hare coursing.  She supported the retention of capital punishment  and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws. 

In 1967, the United States Embassy in London chose Thatcher to take part in the International Visitor Leadership Program (then called the Foreign Leader Program), a professional exchange programme that gave her the opportunity to spend about six weeks visiting various US cities and political figures as well as institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Although she was not yet a cabinet or shadow cabinet member, the embassy reportedly described her to the State Department as a possible future prime minister. The description helped Thatcher meet with many prominent people during a busy itinerary focused on economic issues, including Paul Samuelson, Walt Rostow, Pierre-Paul Schweitzer, and Nelson Rockefeller. After Pike's retirement, Heath appointed Thatcher later that year to the Shadow Cabinet as Fuel and Power spokesman.  Shortly before the 1970 general election, she was promoted to Shadow Transport spokesman and later to Education.

Education Secretary: 1970–74

The Conservative Party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, and Thatcher was subsequently appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Education and Science. During her first months in office she attracted public attention as a result of the administration's attempts to cut spending. She gave priority to academic needs in schools. She imposed public expenditure cuts on the state education system, resulting in the abolition of free milk for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven. She held that few children would suffer if schools were charged for milk, but agreed to provide younger children with a third of a pint daily, for nutritional purposes. Cabinet papers later revealed that she opposed the policy but had been forced into it by the Treasury.  Her decision provoked a storm of protest from Labour and the press, leading to the moniker "Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher".  She reportedly considered leaving politics in the aftermath and later wrote in her autobiography: "I learned a valuable lesson [from the experience]. I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit."

Thatcher's term of office was marked by proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and to adopt comprehensive secondary education. Although she was committed to a tiered secondary modern-grammar school system of education and was determined to preserve grammar schools, during her tenure as Education Secretary she turned down only 326 of 3,612 proposals for schools to become comprehensives; the proportion of pupils attending comprehensive schools consequently rose from 32 per cent to 62 per cent.

Leader of the Opposition: 1975–79

The Heath government continued to experience difficulties with oil embargoes and union demands for wage increases in 1973 and lost the February 1974 general election. Labour formed a minority government and went on to win a narrow majority in the October 1974 general election. Heath's leadership of the Conservative Party looked increasingly in doubt. Thatcher was not initially the obvious replacement, but she eventually became the main challenger, promising a fresh start. Her main support came from the Conservative 1922 Committee, but Thatcher's time in office gave her the reputation of a pragmatist instead of an ideologue. She defeated Heath on the first ballot and he resigned the leadership.  In the second ballot she defeated Whitelaw, Heath's preferred successor. The vote polarised along right-left lines, with the region, experience and education of the MP also having their effects. Thatcher's support was stronger among MPs on the right, those from southern England, and those who had not attended public schools or Oxbridge. 

Thatcher became party leader and Leader of the Opposition on 11 February 1975;  she appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath was never reconciled to Thatcher's leadership. 

Thatcher began to attend lunches regularly at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a think tank founded by the poultry magnate Antony Fisher, a disciple of Friedrich Hayek; she had been visiting the IEA and reading its publications since the early 1960s. There she was influenced by the ideas of Ralph Harris and Arthur Seldon, and she became the face of the ideological movement opposing the welfare state. Keynesian economics, they believed, was weakening Britain. The institute's pamphlets proposed less government, lower taxes, and more freedom for business and consumers.

Television critic Clive James, writing in The Observer during the voting for the leadership, compared her voice of 1973 to a cat sliding down a blackboard. Thatcher had already begun to work on her presentation on the advice of Gordon Reece, a former television producer. By chance Reece met the actor Laurence Olivier, who arranged lessons with the National Theatre's voice coach.  Thatcher succeeded in completely suppressing her Lincolnshire dialect except when under stress, notably after provocation from Denis Healey in the House of Commons in April 1983, when she accused the Labour front bench of being frit.  

On 19 January 1976 Thatcher made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union: 

In response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) called her the "Iron Lady," a sobriquet she gladly adopted.

Margaret Thatcher wanted to prevent the creation of a Scottish assembly. She told Conservative MPs to vote against the Scotland and Wales Bill in December 1976, which was defeated, and then when new Bills were proposed she supported amending the legislation to allow the English to vote in the 1979 referendum on devolution. 

Britain's economy during the 1970s was so weak that Foreign Minister James Callaghan warned his fellow Labour Cabinet members in 1974 of the possibility of "a breakdown of democracy", telling them that "If I were a young man, I would emigrate." In mid-1978, the economy began to improve and opinion polls showed Labour in the lead, with a general election being expected later that year and a Labour win a serious possibility. Now Prime Minister, Callaghan surprised many by announcing on 7 September that there would be no general election that year and he would wait until 1979 before going to the polls. Thatcher reacted to this by branding the Labour government "chickens", and Liberal Party leader David Steel joined in, criticising Labour for "running scared". 

The Labour government then faced fresh public unease about the direction of the country and a damaging series of strikes during the winter of 1978–79, dubbed the "Winter of Discontent". The Conservatives attacked the Labour government's unemployment record, using advertising with the slogan "Labour Isn't Working". A general election was called after Callaghan's government lost a motion of no confidence in early 1979. The Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons, and took charge. 

Premiership of the United Kingdom: 1979–90

Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May 1979. Arriving at 10 Downing Street, she said, in a paraphrase of St. Francis of Assisi's prayer Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace:

Relations with the Queen

As Prime Minister, Thatcher met weekly with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss government business, and their relationship came under close scrutiny.

In July 1986, The Sunday Times reported claims attributed to the Queen's advisers of a "rift" between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street "over a wide range of domestic and international issues".

The Palace issued an official denial, heading off speculation about a possible constitutional crisis. After Thatcher's retirement a senior Palace source again dismissed as "nonsense" the "stereotyped idea" that she had not got along with the Queen, or that they had fallen out over Thatcherite policies.  Thatcher later wrote: "I always found the Queen's attitude towards the work of the Government absolutely correct ... stories of clashes between 'two powerful women' were just too good not to make up."

Economy and taxation

Thatcher's economic policy was influenced by monetarist thinking and economists such as Milton Friedman and Alan Walters. Together with Chancellor of the Exchequer Geoffrey Howe, she lowered direct taxes on income and increased indirect taxes. She increased interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thereby lower inflation, introduced cash limits on public spending, and reduced expenditure on social services such as education and housing. Her cuts in higher education spending resulted in her being the first Oxford-educated post-war Prime Minister not to be awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford, after a 738 to 319 vote of the governing assembly and a student petition.  Her new centrally funded City Technology Colleges did not enjoy much success, and the Funding Agency for Schools was set up to control expenditure by opening and closing schools; the Social Market Foundation, a centre-left think tank, described it as having "an extraordinary range of dictatorial powers".

Some Heathite Conservatives in the Cabinet, the so-called "wets", expressed doubt over Thatcher's policies. The 1981 England riots resulted in the British media discussing the need for a policy U-turn. At the 1980 Conservative Party conference, Thatcher addressed the issue directly, with a speech written by the playwright Ronald Millar that included the lines: "You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning!" 

Thatcher's job approval rating fell to 23% by December 1980, lower than recorded for any previous Prime Minister. As the recession of the early 1980s deepened she increased taxes, despite concerns expressed in a statement signed by 364 leading economists issued towards the end of March 1981. 

By 1982, the UK began to experience signs of economic recovery; inflation was down to 8.6% from a high of 18%, but unemployment was over 3 million for the first time since the 1930s.  By 1983 overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970, although manufacturing output had dropped by 30% since 1978  and unemployment remained high, peaking at 3.3 million in 1984. 

By 1987, unemployment was falling, the economy was stable and strong, and inflation was low. Opinion polls showed a comfortable Conservative lead, and local council election results had also been successful, prompting Thatcher to call a general election for 11 June that year, despite the deadline for an election still being 12 months away. The election saw Thatcher re-elected for a third successive term.  Throughout the 1980s revenue from the 90% tax on North Sea oil extraction was used as a short-term funding source to balance the economy and pay the costs of reform.

Thatcher reformed local government taxes by replacing domestic rates – a tax based on the nominal rental value of a home – with the Community Charge (or poll tax) in which the same amount was charged to each adult resident.  The new tax was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales the following year, and proved to be among the most unpopular policies of her premiership. Public disquiet culminated in a 70,000 to 200,000-strong  demonstration in London on 31 March 1990; the demonstration around Trafalgar Square deteriorated into the Poll Tax Riots, leaving 113 people injured and 340 under arrest.  The Community Charge was abolished by her successor, John Major.

Industrial relations

Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trade unions, whose leadership she accused of undermining parliamentary democracy and economic performance through strike action. Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but resistance eventually collapsed.  Only 39% of union members voted for Labour in the 1983 general election.  According to the BBC, Thatcher "managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation". 

The miners' strike was the biggest confrontation between the unions and the Thatcher government. In March 1984 the National Coal Board (NCB) proposed to close 20 of the 174 state-owned mines and cut 20,000 jobs out of 187,000.

Two-thirds of the country's miners, led by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) under Arthur Scargill, downed tools in protest.  Scargill had refused to hold a ballot on the strike,  having previously lost three ballots on a national strike (January 1982, October 1982, and March 1983).  This led to the strike being declared illegal.  

Thatcher refused to meet the union's demands and compared the miners' dispute to the Falklands conflict two years earlier, declaring in a speech in 1984: "We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands. We always have to be aware of the enemy within, which is much more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty." After a year out on strike, in March 1985, the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The cost to the economy was estimated to be at least £1.5 billion, and the strike was blamed for much of the pound's fall against the US dollar. The government closed 25 unprofitable coal mines in 1985, and by 1992 a total of 97 had been closed; those that remained were privatised in 1994.  The eventual closure of 150 coal mines, not all of which were losing money, resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and devastated entire communities.  Miners had helped bring down the Heath government, and Thatcher was determined to succeed where he had failed. Her strategy of preparing fuel stocks, appointing a union-busting NCB leader in Ian MacGregor, and ensuring police were adequately trained and equipped with riot gear, contributed to her victory.

The number of stoppages across the UK peaked at 4,583 in 1979, when more than 29 million working days were lost. In 1984, the year of the miners' strike, there were 1,221, resulting in the loss of more than 27 million working days. Stoppages then fell steadily throughout the rest of Thatcher's premiership; in 1990 there were 630 and fewer than 2 million working days lost, and they continued to fall thereafter. Thatcher's time in office witnessed a sharp decline in trade union density, with the percentage of workers belonging to a trade union falling from 57.3% in 1979 to 49.5% in 1985.  In 1979 up until Thatcher's last year in office, trade union membership also fell, from 13.5 million in 1979 to fewer than 10 million.

Privatisation

The policy of privatisation has been called "a crucial ingredient of Thatcherism". After the 1983 election the sale of state utilities accelerated; more than £29 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised industries, and another £18 billion from the sale of council houses.

The process of privatisation, especially the preparation of nationalised industries for privatisation, was associated with marked improvements in performance, particularly in terms of labour productivity.

Some of the privatised industries, including gas, water, and electricity, were natural monopolies for which privatisation involved little increase in competition. The privatised industries that demonstrated improvement sometimes did so while still under state ownership. British Steel Corporation, for instance, made great gains in profitability while still a nationalised industry under the government-appointed chairmanship of Ian MacGregor, who faced down trade-union opposition to close plants and reduce the workforce by half.  Regulation was also significantly expanded to compensate for the loss of direct government control, with the foundation of regulatory bodies such as Ofgas, Oftel and the National Rivers Authority. There was no clear pattern to the degree of competition, regulation, and performance among the privatised industries; in most cases privatisation benefited consumers in terms of lower prices and improved efficiency, but the results overall were "mixed".

Thatcher always resisted rail privatisation and was said to have told Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley "Railway privatisation will be the Waterloo of this government. Please never mention the railways to me again." Shortly before her resignation, she accepted the arguments for privatising British Rail, which her successor John Major implemented in 1994. The effect of privatising the railway is disputed, with large growth in passenger numbers and increasing efficiency matched by large public subsidy and concern about foreign companies running British railways.

The privatisation of public assets was combined with financial deregulation in an attempt to fuel economic growth. Geoffrey Howe abolished Britain's exchange controls in 1979, allowing more capital to be invested in foreign markets, and the Big Bang of 1986 removed many restrictions on the London Stock Exchange. The Thatcher government encouraged growth in the finance and service sectors to compensate for Britain's ailing manufacturing industry.

Northern Ireland

In 1980 and 1981, Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison carried out hunger strikes in an effort to regain the status of political prisoners that had been removed in 1976 by the preceding Labour government.

Bobby Sands began the 1981 strike, saying that he would fast until death unless prison inmates won concessions over their living conditions.  Thatcher refused to countenance a return to political status for the prisoners, declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political", but nevertheless the UK government privately contacted republican leaders in a bid to bring the hunger strikes to an end.  After the deaths of Sands and nine others, the strike ended. Some rights were restored to paramilitary prisoners, but not official recognition of political status. Violence in Northern Ireland escalated significantly during the hunger strikes; in 1982 Sinn Féin politician Danny Morrison described Thatcher as "the biggest bastard we have ever known".

Thatcher narrowly escaped injury in an IRA assassination attempt at a Brighton hotel early in the morning on 12 October 1984.  Five people were killed, including the wife of Cabinet Minister John Wakeham. Thatcher was staying at the hotel to attend the Conservative Party Conference, which she insisted should open as scheduled the following day. She delivered her speech as planned, a move that was widely supported across the political spectrum and enhanced her popularity with the public. 

On 6 November 1981, Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald had established the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council, a forum for meetings between the two governments.  On 15 November 1985, Thatcher and FitzGerald signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement, the first time a British government had given the Republic of Ireland an advisory role in the governance of Northern Ireland. In protest the Ulster Says No movement attracted 100,000 to a rally in Belfast,  Ian Gow resigned as Minister of State in the HM Treasury,  and all fifteen Unionist MPs resigned their parliamentary seats; only one was not returned in the subsequent by-elections on 23 January 1986.

Environment

Thatcher supported an active climate protection policy and was instrumental in the creation of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and in founding the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the British Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter.Alice Bell, [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/apr/09/margaret-thatcher-green-hero "Greenwashing Thatcher's history does an injustice both to her and to science and technology policy"], TheGuardian.com, 9 April 2013. Thatcher helped to put climate change, acid rain and general pollution in the British mainstream in the early 1980s. Her speeches included one to Royal Society on 27 September 1988  and to the UN general assembly in November 1989. She did not visit the Earth Summit 1992 and later became sceptical about climate change policy.

Foreign affairs

Thatcher's first foreign policy crisis came with the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She condemned the invasion, said it showed the bankruptcy of a détente policy, and helped convince some British athletes to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics. She gave weak support to American President Jimmy Carter who tried to punish the USSR with economic sanctions. Britain's economic situation was precarious, and most of NATO was reluctant to cut trade ties.  It was reported that her government secretly supplied Saddam Hussein with military equipment as early as 1981. 

Thatcher became closely aligned with the Cold War policies of United States President Ronald Reagan, based on their shared distrust of Communism, although she strongly opposed Reagan's October 1983 invasion of Grenada. Reagan had assured Thatcher that an invasion was not contemplated, and thereafter Thatcher felt she could never fully trust Reagan again.  During her first year as Prime Minister she supported NATO's decision to deploy US nuclear cruise and Pershing II missiles in Western Europe and permitted the US to station more than 160 cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common, starting on 14 November 1983 and triggering mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She bought the Trident nuclear missile submarine system from the US to replace Polaris, tripling the UK's nuclear forces  at an eventual cost of more than £12 billion (at 1996–97 prices).  Thatcher's preference for defence ties with the US was demonstrated in the Westland affair of January 1986, when she acted with colleagues to allow the struggling helicopter manufacturer Westland to refuse a takeover offer from the Italian firm Agusta in favour of the management's preferred option, a link with Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation. The UK Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, who had supported the Agusta deal, resigned in protest.

On 2 April 1982 the ruling military junta in Argentina ordered the invasion of the British-controlled Falkland Islands and South Georgia, triggering the Falklands War. The subsequent crisis was "a defining moment of her [Thatcher's] premiership". At the suggestion of Harold Macmillan and Robert Armstrong, she set up and chaired a small War Cabinet (formally called ODSA, Overseas and Defence committee, South Atlantic) to take charge of the conduct of the war,  which by 5–6 April had authorised and dispatched a naval task force to retake the islands. Argentina surrendered on 14 June and the operation was hailed a success, notwithstanding the deaths of 255 British servicemen and 3 Falkland Islanders. Argentinian deaths totalled 649, half of them after the nuclear-powered submarine  torpedoed and sank the cruiser ARA General Belgrano on 2 May. Thatcher was criticised for the neglect of the Falklands' defence that led to the war, and especially by Tam Dalyell in parliament for the decision to sink the General Belgrano, but overall she was considered a highly capable and committed war leader. The "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided opposition all contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983.  Thatcher often referred after the war to the "Falklands Spirit"; Hastings and Jenkins (1983) suggested that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peace-time cabinet government.

In September 1982 she visited China to discuss with Deng Xiaoping the sovereignty of Hong Kong after 1997. China was the first communist state Thatcher had visited and she was the first British prime minister to visit China. Throughout their meeting, she sought the PRC's agreement to a continued British presence in the territory. Deng stated that the PRC's sovereignty on Hong Kong was non-negotiable, but he was willing to settle the sovereignty issue with Britain through formal negotiations, and both governments promised to maintain Hong Kong's stability and prosperity.  After the two-year negotiations, Thatcher conceded to the PRC government and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in Beijing in 1984, agreeing to hand over Hong Kong's sovereignty in 1997.

Although saying that she was in favour of "peaceful negotiations" to end apartheid,  Thatcher stood against the sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the EC. She attempted to preserve trade with South Africa while persuading the government there to abandon apartheid. This included "[c]asting herself as President Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to visit the UK in June 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his government. Thatcher dismissed the African National Congress (ANC) in October 1987 as "a typical terrorist organisation". 

The Thatcher government supported the Khmer Rouge keeping their seat in the UN after they were ousted from power in Cambodia by the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. Although denying it at the time they also sent the SAS to train the non-Communist members of the CGDK to fight against the Vietnamese-backed People's Republic of Kampuchea government.  

Thatcher's antipathy towards European integration became more pronounced during her premiership, particularly after her third election victory in 1987. During a 1988 speech in Bruges she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community (EC), forerunner of the European Union, for a federal structure and increased centralisation of decision making.  Thatcher and her party had supported British membership of the EC in the 1975 national referendum,  but she believed that the role of the organisation should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that the EC's approach was at odds with her views on smaller government and deregulation; in 1988, she remarked, "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels".

Thatcher was firmly opposed to the UK's membership of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a precursor to European monetary union, believing that it would constrain the British economy,  despite the urging of her Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe, but she was persuaded by John Major to join in October 1990, at what proved to be too high a rate.

In April 1986, Thatcher permitted US F-111s to use Royal Air Force bases for the bombing of Libya in retaliation for the alleged Libyan bombing of a Berlin discothèque, citing the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter.  Polls suggested that fewer than one in three British citizens approved of Thatcher's decision.  She was in the US on a state visit when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded neighbouring Kuwait in August 1990.  During her talks with President George H. W. Bush, who had succeeded Reagan in 1989, she recommended intervention, and put pressure on Bush to deploy troops in the Middle East to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait.  Bush was apprehensive about the plan, prompting Thatcher to remark to him during a telephone conversation that "This was no time to go wobbly!"  Thatcher's government provided military forces to the international coalition in the build-up to the Gulf War, but she had resigned by the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991.

Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was".  She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984 and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers.  Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling Gorbachev that it "would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security". She expressed concern that a united Germany would align itself more closely with the Soviet Union and move away from NATO.

Challenges to leadership and resignation

Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by the little-known backbench MP Sir Anthony Meyer in the 1989 leadership election.  Of the 374 Conservative MPs eligible to vote, 314 voted for Thatcher and 33 for Meyer. Her supporters in the party viewed the result as a success, and rejected suggestions that there was discontent within the party.

During her premiership Thatcher had the second-lowest average approval rating, at 40%, of any post-war Prime Minister. Polls consistently showed that she was less popular than her party.  A self-described conviction politician, Thatcher always insisted that she did not care about her poll ratings, pointing instead to her unbeaten election record. 

Opinion polls in September 1990 reported that Labour had established a 14% lead over the Conservatives, and by November the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months. These ratings, together with Thatcher's combative personality and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, contributed to discontent within the Conservative Party.

On 1 November 1990, Geoffrey Howe the last remaining member of Thatcher's original 1979 cabinet, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister over her refusal to agree to a timetable for Britain to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.   In his resignation speech on 13 November, Howe commented on Thatcher's European stance: "It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find the moment that the first balls are bowled that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."  His resignation was fatal to Thatcher's premiership. 

The next day, Michael Heseltine mounted a challenge for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Opinion polls had indicated that he would give the Conservatives a national lead over Labour.  Although Thatcher won the first ballot with 204:152 votes and 16 abstentions, Heseltine had attracted sufficient support to force a second ballot. Under party rules, Thatcher not only needed to win a majority, but her margin over Heseltine had to be equivalent to 15% of the 372 Conservative MPs in order to win the leadership election outright; with 54.8% against 40.9% for Heseltine, she came up four votes short.  Thatcher initially stated that she intended to "fight on and fight to win" the second ballot, but consultation with her Cabinet persuaded her to withdraw.   After visiting the Queen, calling other world leaders, and making one final Commons speech,  she left Downing Street in tears. She reportedly regarded her ousting as a betrayal.

Thatcher was replaced as Prime Minister and party leader by her Chancellor John Major, who prevailed over Heseltine in the subsequent ballots. Major oversaw an upturn in Conservative support in the 17 months leading up to the 1992 general election and led the Conservatives to their fourth successive victory on 9 April 1992.  Thatcher had favoured Major over Heseltine in the leadership contest, but her support for him weakened in later years. 

Later life

Thatcher returned to the backbenches as MP for Finchley for two years after leaving the premiership. She retired from the House at the 1992 election, aged 66, saying that leaving the Commons would allow her more freedom to speak her mind. 

Post-Commons: 1992–2003

After leaving the House of Commons, Thatcher became the first former Prime Minister to set up a foundation;  the British wing of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation was dissolved in 2005 because of financial difficulties.  She wrote two volumes of memoirs, The Downing Street Years (1993) and The Path to Power (1995). In 1991, she and her husband Denis moved to a house in Chester Square, a residential garden square in central London's Belgravia district. 

In 1992, Thatcher was hired by the tobacco company Philip Morris as a "geopolitical consultant" for $250,000 per year and an annual contribution of $250,000 to her foundation. She also earned $50,000 for each speech she delivered. 

In August 1992, Thatcher called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo to end ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War. She compared the situation in Bosnia to "the worst excesses of the Nazis", and warned that there could be a "holocaust".  She had been an advocate of Croatian and Slovenian independence. 

In a 1991 interview for Croatian Radiotelevision, Thatcher had commented on the Yugoslav Wars; she was critical of Western governments for not recognising the breakaway republics of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states and for not supplying them with arms after the Serbian-led Yugoslav Army attacked. 

She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty, describing it as "a treaty too far" and stated "I could never have signed this treaty".  She cited A. V. Dicey when stating that as all three main parties were in favour of the treaty, the people should have their say in a referendum. 

Thatcher was honorary Chancellor of the College of William & Mary in Virginia (1993–2000)  and also of the University of Buckingham (1992–99), the UK's first private university, which she had opened in 1975. 

After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher praised Blair in an interview as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved". 

In 1998, Thatcher called for the release of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet when Spain had him arrested and sought to try him for human rights violations. She cited the help he gave Britain during the Falklands War.  In 1999, she visited him while he was under house arrest near London.  Pinochet was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw, without facing trial. 

In the 2001 general election, Thatcher supported the Conservative general election campaign, as she had done in 1992 and 1997, and in the Conservative leadership election shortly after, she supported Iain Duncan Smith over Kenneth Clarke. 

In 2002, Thatcher encouraged President George W. Bush to aggressively tackle the "unfinished business" of Saddam Hussein's Iraq,  and praised Tony Blair for his "strong, bold leadership" in standing with Bush in the Iraq War. 

She broached the same subject in her Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, which was published that year and dedicated to Ronald Reagan, writing that there would be no peace in the Middle East until Saddam Hussein was toppled. Her book also said that Israel must trade land for peace, and that the European Union (EU) was "fundamentally unreformable", "a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure".  She argued that Britain should renegotiate its terms of membership or else leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Area. 

That same year, she suffered several small strokes and was advised by her doctors not to engage in further public speaking.  On 23 March, she announced that on the advice of her doctors she would cancel all planned speaking engagements and accept no more.

Husband's death: 2003

Sir Denis Thatcher died of pancreatic cancer on 26 June 2003 and was cremated on 3 July.  She had paid tribute to him in The Downing Street Years, writing "Being Prime Minister is a lonely job. In a sense, it ought to be: you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there I was never alone. What a man. What a husband. What a friend."

Final years: 2003–13

On 11 June 2004, Thatcher, against doctor's orders, attended the state funeral service for Ronald Reagan.  She delivered her eulogy via videotape; in view of her health, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier.  Thatcher flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for the president at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. 

Thatcher celebrated her 80th birthday at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park, London, on 13 October 2005; guests included the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra and Tony Blair.  Geoffrey Howe, by then Lord Howe of Aberavon, was also present, and said of his former leader: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible." 

According to a later article in The Daily Telegraph, Thatcher's daughter Carol first revealed that her mother had dementia in 2005, saying that "Mum doesn't read much any more because of her memory loss ... It's pointless. She can't remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she reaches the end." She later recounted how she was first struck by her mother's dementia when in conversation Thatcher confused the Falklands and Yugoslav conflicts; she recalled the pain of needing to tell her mother repeatedly that Denis Thatcher was dead. 

In 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States. She was a guest of Vice President Dick Cheney, and met Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit. 

In February 2007, Thatcher became the first living British Prime Minister to be honoured with a statue in the Houses of Parliament. The bronze statue stands opposite that of her political hero, Sir Winston Churchill, and was unveiled on 21 February 2007 with Thatcher in attendance; she made a brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of Commons, responding: "I might have preferred iron—but bronze will do ... It won't rust." 

She was a public supporter of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism and the resulting Prague Process, and sent a public letter of support to its preceding conference. 

After collapsing at a House of Lords dinner, Thatcher was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital in central London on 7 March 2008 for tests. In 2009 she was hospitalised again when she fell and broke her arm. 

Thatcher returned to 10 Downing Street in late November 2009 for the unveiling of an official portrait by artist Richard Stone, an unusual honour for a living ex-Prime Minister. Stone had previously painted portraits of the Queen and the Queen Mother.

On 4 July 2011, Thatcher was to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of a 10-foot statue to former American President Ronald Reagan, outside the American Embassy in London, but was unable to attend due to her frail health.  On 31 July 2011, it was announced that her office in the House of Lords had been closed.  Earlier that month, Thatcher had been named the most competent British Prime Minister of the past 30 years in an Ipsos MORI poll. 

Death and funeral: 2013

Lady Thatcher died on 8 April 2013 at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke. She had been staying at a suite in the Ritz Hotel in London since December 2012 after having difficulty with stairs at her Chester Square home in Belgravia. 

Reactions to the news of Thatcher's death were mixed in the UK, ranging from tributes lauding her as Britain's greatest-ever peacetime Prime Minister to public celebrations of her death and expressions of personalised vitriol. 

Details of Thatcher's funeral had been agreed with her in advance.  She received a ceremonial funeral, including full military honours, with a church service at St Paul's Cathedral on 17 April.  

Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, attended the funeral,  the second time in the Queen's reign that she had attended the funeral of a former prime minister (the first being that of Winston Churchill in 1965). 

After the service at St Paul's Cathedral, Thatcher's body was cremated at Mortlake Crematorium, where her husband had been cremated. On 28 September a service for Thatcher was held in the All Saints Chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea's Margaret Thatcher Infirmary. In a private ceremony Thatcher's ashes were interred in the grounds of the hospital, next to those of her husband.

Legacy

Political legacy

Thatcherism represented a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the post-war consensus, whereby the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of Keynesianism, the welfare state, nationalised industry, and close regulation of the economy. There was one major exception: the National Health Service, which was widely popular. She promised Britons in 1982, the NHS is "safe in our hands." 

Thatcher defined her own political philosophy in a major and controversial break with One Nation Conservatives like her predecessor Edward Heath,  in her statement to Douglas Keay, published in Woman's Own magazine in September 1987:

The number of adults owning shares rose from 7 per cent to 25 per cent during her tenure, and more than a million families bought their council houses, giving an increase from 55 per cent to 67 per cent in owner-occupiers from 1979 to 1990. The houses were sold at a discount of 33–55 per cent, leading to large profits for some new owners. Personal wealth rose by 80 per cent in real terms during the 1980s, mainly due to rising house prices and increased earnings. Shares in the privatised utilities were sold below their market value to ensure quick and wide sales, rather than maximise national income.

Thatcher's premiership was also marked by periods of high unemployment and social unrest, and many critics on the left of the political spectrum fault her economic policies for the unemployment level; many of the areas affected by high unemployment as well as her monetarist economic policies remain blighted by social problems such as drug abuse and family breakdown.

Speaking in Scotland in April 2009, before the 30th anniversary of her election as Prime Minister, Thatcher insisted she had no regrets and was right to introduce the poll tax, and to withdraw subsidies from "outdated industries, whose markets were in terminal decline", subsidies that created "the culture of dependency, which had done such damage to Britain".  Political economist Susan Strange called the new financial growth model "casino capitalism", reflecting her view that speculation and financial trading were becoming more important to the economy than industry.

Critics on the left describe her as "divisive"  and claim she promoted greed and selfishness. Michael White, writing in the New Statesman in February 2009, challenged the view that her reforms had brought a net benefit.  Some critics contend that, despite being Britain's first woman Prime Minister, Thatcher did "little to advance the political cause of women", either within her party or the government, and some British feminists  regarded her as "an enemy". Her stance on immigration was perceived by some as part of a rising racist public discourse, which Professor Martin Barker  called "new racism".

Influenced at the outset by Keith Joseph, the term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.  The nickname "Iron Lady", originally given to her by the Soviets, became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style.  

Thatcher's tenure of 11 years and 209 days as Prime Minister was the longest since Lord Salisbury (13 years and 252 days in three spells starting in 1885), and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool (14 years and 305 days starting in 1812). 

She was voted the fourth-greatest British Prime Minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by MORI,  and in 2002 was ranked number 16 in the BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons.  In 1999, Time magazine named Thatcher one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century. 

Thatcher's death prompted mixed reactions, including reflections of criticism as well as praise.    Groups celebrated her death in Brixton, Leeds, Bristol and Glasgow,    and a crowd of 3,000 gathered in Trafalgar Square to celebrate her demise and protest against her legacy. 

Shortly after Thatcher's death, Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, argued that her policies had the "unintended consequence" of encouraging Scottish devolution.  Lord Foulkes agreed on Scotland Tonight that she had provided "the impetus" for devolution. 

Cultural depictions

One of the earliest satires of Thatcher as Prime Minister involved Wells (as writer/performer), Janet Brown (voicing Thatcher) and future Spitting Image producer John Lloyd, who in 1979 were teamed up by producer Martin Lewis for the satirical audio album The Iron Lady consisting of skits and songs satirising Thatcher's rise to power. The album was released in September 1979, four months after Thatcher became Premier.  

Thatcher was the subject or the inspiration for 1980s protest songs. Billy Bragg and Paul Weller helped to form the Red Wedge collective to support Labour in opposition to Thatcher.

Thatcher was lampooned by satirist John Wells in several media. Wells collaborated with Richard Ingrams on the spoof "Dear Bill" letters which ran as a column in Private Eye magazine, were published in book form, and later became a West End stage revue named Anyone for Denis?, with Wells in the role of Denis Thatcher. The revue was followed by a 1982 TV special, directed by Dick Clement, in which Thatcher was portrayed by Angela Thorne.  Spitting Image, a British TV show, satirised Thatcher as a bully who ridiculed her own ministers. She was voiced by Steve Nallon. 

Margaret Thatcher has been depicted in many television programmes, documentaries, films and plays. She was played by Patricia Hodge in Ian Curteis's long unproduced The Falklands Play (2002), and by Andrea Riseborough in the TV film The Long Walk to Finchley (2008). She is the title character in two films, portrayed by Lindsay Duncan in Margaret (2009) and by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (2011),  in which she is depicted as suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's disease. 

Titles, awards and honours

Thatcher became a Privy Councillor (PC) upon becoming Secretary of State for Education and Science in 1970. 

She was the first woman entitled to full membership rights as an honorary member of the Carlton Club on becoming leader of the Conservative Party in 1975.  Thatcher became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chemistry (FRIC) in 1979. 

Thatcher was bestowed with the Grand Cross of the Order of Good Hope, which was, at that time, the highest existing South African award, in 1991, by President F. W. de Klerk. 

Thatcher was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983, which caused controversy among some of the then-existing Fellows.

Within two weeks of leaving office in 1990, Thatcher was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit (OM) (an order within the personal gift of the Queen). Her husband, Denis Thatcher, was made a Baronet at the same time. 

In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher Day has been marked every 10 January since 1992,  commemorating her visit in 1983. Thatcher Drive in Stanley is named for her, as is Thatcher Peninsula in South Georgia, where the task force troops first set foot on the Falklands.

She became member of the House of Lords in 1992 with a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire.  She was appointed a Lady Companion of the Order of the Garter (LG), the UK's highest order of chivalry, in 1995. 

She was a patron of The Heritage Foundation,  which established the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom in 2005. David William Donald Cameron (; born 9 October 1966) is a British politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. He was the Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016, and has been Member of Parliament for Witney since 2001. Cameron identifies as a One-Nation Conservative, and has been associated with both economically liberal and socially liberal policies.

Born in London to wealthy upper middle-class parents, Cameron was educated at Heatherdown School, Eton College, and Brasenose College, Oxford. From 1988 to 1993 he worked at the Conservative Research Department, assisting the Conservative Prime Minister John Major, before leaving politics to work for Carlton Communications in 1994. Becoming an MP in 2001, he served in the opposition shadow cabinet under Conservative leader Michael Howard, succeeding Howard in 2005. Cameron sought to rebrand the Conservatives, embracing an increasingly socially liberal position. The 2010 general election led to Cameron becoming Prime Minister as the head of a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats. His premiership was marked by the ongoing effects of the late-2000s financial crisis; these involved a large deficit in government finances that his government sought to reduce through austerity measures. His administration introduced large-scale changes to welfare, immigration policy, education, and healthcare.  It privatised the Royal Mail and some other state assets, and legalised same-sex marriage.

Internationally, his government militarily intervened in the Libyan Civil War and later authorised the bombing of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant; domestically, his government oversaw the referendum on voting reform and Scottish independence referendum, both of which confirmed Cameron's favoured outcome. When the Conservatives secured a majority in the 2015 general election, he remained as Prime Minister leading a Conservative government. To fulfil a manifesto pledge, he introduced a referendum on the UK's continuing membership of the EU. Cameron supported continued membership; following the success of the Leave vote, he chose to resign to make way for a new Prime Minister and was succeeded by Theresa May. 

Cameron has been praised for modernising the Conservative Party and for reining in the United Kingdom's national debt. Conversely, he has been criticised by figures on both the left and right, and has been accused of political opportunism and social elitism. Cameron appeared on the Forbes List of The World's Most Powerful People from 2010. 

Family

Cameron is the younger son of Ian Donald Cameron (1932–2010), a stockbroker, and his wife Mary Fleur,  Mount (born 1934), a retired Justice of the Peace and a daughter of Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet.  Cameron's parents were married on 20 October 1962. The journalist Toby Young has described Cameron's background as being "upper-upper-middle class". 

Cameron was born in Marylebone, London,  and raised in Peasemore, Berkshire.  He has a brother, Alexander Cameron, QC (born 1963), a barrister,  and two sisters, Tania Rachel (born 1965) and Clare Louise (born 1971). 

His father, Ian, was born at Blairmore House near Huntly, Aberdeenshire, and died near Toulon, France, on 8 September 2010;  Ian was born with both legs deformed and underwent repeated operations to correct them. Blairmore was built by Cameron's great-great-grandfather, Alexander Geddes,  who had made a fortune in the grain trade in Chicago, Illinois, before returning to Scotland in the 1880s. 

Cameron has said, "On my mother's side of the family, her mother was a Llewellyn, so Welsh. I'm a real mixture of Scottish, Welsh, and English."  He has also referenced the German Jewish ancestry of one of his great-grandfathers, Arthur Levita, a descendant of the Yiddish author Elia Levita.  

Education

From the age of seven, Cameron was educated at two independent schools: at Heatherdown School in Winkfield (near Ascot) in Berkshire, which counts Prince Andrew and Prince Edward among its old boys. Owing to good grades, Cameron entered its top academic class almost two years early.  At the age of thirteen, he went on to Eton College in Berkshire, following his father and elder brother.  His early interest was in art. Six weeks before taking his O-Levels he was caught smoking cannabis. He admitted the offence and had not been involved in selling drugs, so he was not expelled, but was fined, prevented from leaving the school grounds, and given a "Georgic" (a punishment which involved copying 500 lines of Latin text). 

Cameron passed twelve O-Levels and then three A-levels: History of art, History, in which he was taught by Michael Kidson, and Economics with Politics. He obtained three 'A' grades and a '1' grade in the Scholarship Level exam in Economics and Politics.  The following autumn he passed the entrance exam for the University of Oxford, and was offered an exhibition at Brasenose College. 

After leaving Eton in 1984,  Cameron started a nine-month gap year. For three months he worked as a researcher for his godfather Tim Rathbone, then Conservative MP for Lewes, during which time he attended debates in the House of Commons.  Through his father, he was then employed for a further three months in Hong Kong by Jardine Matheson as a 'ship jumper', an administrative post. 

Returning from Hong Kong, Cameron visited the then Soviet Union, where he was approached by two Russian men speaking fluent English. Cameron was later told by one of his professors that it was "definitely an attempt" by the KGB to recruit him. 

In October 1985, Cameron began his Bachelor of Arts course in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Brasenose College, Oxford.  His tutor, Professor Vernon Bogdanor, has described him as "one of the ablest" students he has taught,  with "moderate and sensible Conservative" political views.

Guy Spier, who shared tutorials with him, remembers him as an outstanding student: "We were doing our best to grasp basic economic concepts. David—there was nobody else who came even close. He would be integrating them with the way the British political system is put together. He could have lectured me on it, and I would have sat there and taken notes."  When commenting in 2006 on his former pupil's ideas about a "Bill of Rights" to replace the Human Rights Act, however, Professor Bogdanor, himself a Liberal Democrat, said, "I think he is very confused. I've read his speech and it's filled with contradictions. There are one or two good things in it but one glimpses them, as it were, through a mist of misunderstanding". 

While at Oxford, Cameron was a member of the student dining society the Bullingdon Club, which has a reputation for an outlandish drinking culture associated with boisterous behaviour and damaging property.  Cameron's period in the Bullingdon Club was examined in a Channel 4 docu-drama, When Boris Met Dave.

Cameron graduated in 1988 with a first-class honours BA degree (later promoted to an MA by seniority).

Early political career

Conservative Research Department

After graduation, Cameron worked for the Conservative Research Department between September 1988 and 1993. His first brief was Trade and Industry, Energy and Privatisation, and he befriended fellow young colleagues including Edward Llewellyn, Ed Vaizey and Rachel Whetstone. They and others formed a group they called the "Smith Square set", which was dubbed the "Brat Pack" by the press, though it is better known as the "Notting Hill set", a name given to it pejoratively by Derek Conway. In 1991, Cameron was seconded to Downing Street to work on briefing John Major for the then bi-weekly sessions of Prime Minister's Questions. One newspaper gave Cameron the credit for "sharper ... Despatch box performances" by Major,  which included highlighting for Major "a dreadful piece of doublespeak" by Tony Blair (then the Labour Employment spokesman) over the effect of a national minimum wage.  He became head of the political section of the Conservative Research Department, and in August 1991 was tipped to follow Judith Chaplin as Political Secretary to the Prime Minister. 

However, Cameron lost to Jonathan Hill, who was appointed in March 1992. Instead, Cameron was given the responsibility for briefing Major for his press conferences during the 1992 general election.  During the campaign, Cameron was one of the young "brat pack" of party strategists who worked between 12 and 20 hours a day, sleeping in the house of Alan Duncan in Gayfere Street, Westminster, which had been Major's campaign headquarters during his bid for the Conservative leadership.  Cameron headed the economic section; it was while working on this campaign that Cameron first worked closely with and befriended Steve Hilton, who was later to become Director of Strategy during his party leadership.  The strain of getting up at 04:45 every day was reported to have led Cameron to decide to leave politics in favour of journalism. 

Special Adviser to the Chancellor

The Conservatives' unexpected success in the 1992 election led Cameron to hit back at older party members who had criticised him and his colleagues, saying "whatever people say about us, we got the campaign right," and that they had listened to their campaign workers on the ground rather than the newspapers. He revealed he had led other members of the team across Smith Square to jeer at Transport House, the former Labour headquarters.  Cameron was rewarded with a promotion to Special Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont. 

Cameron was working for Lamont at the time of Black Wednesday, when pressure from currency speculators forced the pound sterling out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. At the 1992 Conservative Party conference, Cameron had difficulty trying to arrange to brief the speakers in the economic debate, having to resort to putting messages on the internal television system imploring the mover of the motion, Patricia Morris, to contact him.  Later that month Cameron joined a delegation of Special Advisers who visited Germany to build better relations with the Christian Democratic Union; he was reported to be "still smarting" over the Bundesbank's contribution to the economic crisis. 

Lamont fell out with John Major after Black Wednesday and became highly unpopular with the public. Taxes needed to be raised in the 1993 Budget, and Cameron fed the options Lamont was considering through to Conservative Campaign Headquarters for their political acceptability to be assessed.  By May 1993, the Conservatives' average poll rating dropped below 30%, where they would remain until the 1997 general election. Major and Lamont's personal ratings also declined dramatically. However, Lamont's unpopularity did not necessarily affect Cameron: he was considered as a potential "kamikaze" candidate for the Newbury by-election, which includes the area where he grew up.  However, Cameron decided not to stand.

During the by-election, Lamont gave the response "Je ne regrette rien" to a question about whether he most regretted claiming to see "the green shoots of recovery" or admitting to "singing in his bath" with happiness at leaving the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Cameron was identified by one journalist as having inspired this gaffe; it was speculated that the heavy Conservative defeat in Newbury may have cost Cameron his chance of becoming Chancellor himself, even though as he was not a Member of Parliament he could not have been.  Lamont was sacked at the end of May 1993, and decided not to write the usual letter of resignation; Cameron was given the responsibility to issue to the press a statement of self-justification. 

Special Adviser to the Home Secretary

After Lamont was sacked, Cameron remained at the Treasury for less than a month before being specifically recruited by Home Secretary Michael Howard. It was commented that he was still "very much in favour"  and it was later reported that many at the Treasury would have preferred Cameron to carry on.  At the beginning of September 1993, Cameron applied to go on Conservative Central Office's list of Prospective Parliamentary Candidates. 

Cameron was much more socially liberal than Howard but enjoyed working for him. According to Derek Lewis, then Director-General of Her Majesty's Prison Service, Cameron showed him a "his and hers list" of proposals made by Howard and his wife, Sandra. Lewis said that Sandra Howard's list included reducing the quality of prison food, although Sandra Howard denied this claim. Lewis reported that Cameron was "uncomfortable" about the list.  In defending Sandra Howard and insisting that she made no such proposal, the journalist Bruce Anderson wrote that Cameron had proposed a much shorter definition on prison catering which revolved around the phrase "balanced diet", and that Lewis had written thanking Cameron for a valuable contribution. 

During his work for Howard, Cameron often briefed the media. In March 1994, someone leaked to the press that the Labour Party had called for a meeting with John Major to discuss a consensus on the Prevention of Terrorism Act. After an inquiry failed to find the source of the leak, Labour MP Peter Mandelson demanded assurance from Howard that Cameron had not been responsible, which Howard gave.   A senior Home Office civil servant noted the influence of Howard's Special Advisers, saying previous incumbents "would listen to the evidence before making a decision. Howard just talks to young public school gentlemen from the party headquarters." 

Carlton

In July 1994, Cameron left his role as Special Adviser to work as the Director of Corporate Affairs at Carlton Communications.  Carlton, which had won the ITV franchise for London weekdays in 1991, was a growing media company which also had film-distribution and video-producing arms. Cameron was suggested for the role to Carlton executive chairman Michael P. Green by his later mother-in-law Lady Astor.  Cameron left Carlton to run for Parliament in 1997, returning to his job after his defeat.

In 1997, Cameron played up the Company's prospects for digital terrestrial television, for which it joined with ITV Granada and Sky to form British Digital Broadcasting. In a roundtable discussion on the future of broadcasting in 1998 he criticised the effect of overlapping different regulators on the industry.  Carlton's consortium did win the digital terrestrial franchise but the resulting company suffered difficulties in attracting subscribers. Cameron resigned as Director of Corporate Affairs in February 2001 in order to run for Parliament for a second time, although he remained on the payroll as a consultant.

Parliamentary candidacies

Having been approved for the Candidates' list, Cameron began looking for a seat to contest for the 1997 general election. He was reported to have missed out on selection for Ashford in December 1994 after failing to get to the selection meeting as a result of train delays.  In January 1996, when two shortlisted contenders dropped out, Cameron was interviewed and subsequently selected for Stafford, a constituency revised in boundary changes, which was projected to have a Conservative majority.  The incumbent Conservative MP, Bill Cash, ran instead in the neighbouring constituency of Stone, where he was re-elected. At the 1996 Conservative Party Conference, Cameron called for tax cuts in the forthcoming Budget to be targeted at the low-paid and to "small businesses where people took money out of their own pockets to put into companies to keep them going".  He also said the Party "should be proud of the Tory tax record but that people needed reminding of its achievements ... It's time to return to our tax-cutting agenda. The socialist Prime Ministers of Europe have endorsed Tony Blair because they want a federal pussy cat and not a British lion." 

When writing his election address, Cameron made his own opposition to British membership of the single European currency clear, pledging not to support it. This was a break with official Conservative policy but about 200 other candidates were making similar declarations.  Otherwise, Cameron kept closely to the national party line. He also campaigned using the claim that a Labour Government would increase the cost of a pint of beer by 24p; however, the Labour candidate, David Kidney, portrayed Cameron as "a right-wing Tory". Initially, Cameron thought he had a 50/50 chance but as the campaign wore on and the scale of the impending Conservative defeat grew, Cameron prepared himself for defeat. On election day, Stafford had a swing of 10.7%, almost the same as the national swing, which made it one of the many seats to fall to Labour: Kidney defeated Cameron by 24,606 votes (47.5%) to 20,292 (39.2%), a majority of 4,314 (8.3%).  

In the round of selection contests taking place in the run-up to the 2001 general election, Cameron again attempted to be selected for a winnable seat. He tried for the Kensington and Chelsea seat after the death of Alan Clark, but did not make the shortlist. He was in the final two but narrowly lost at Wealden in March 2000,  a loss ascribed by Samantha Cameron to his lack of spontaneity when speaking. 

On 4 April 2000 Cameron was selected as prospective candidate (PPC) for Witney in Oxfordshire. This had been a safe Conservative seat but its sitting MP Shaun Woodward (who had worked with Cameron on the 1992 election campaign) had "crossed the floor" to join the Labour Party and was selected instead for the safe Labour seat of St Helens South. Cameron's biographers Francis Elliott and James Hanning describe the two men as being "on fairly friendly terms".Elliott and Hanning (2007), p. 192. Cameron, advised in his strategy by friend Catherine Fall, put a great deal of effort into "nursing" his potential constituency, turning up at social functions, and attacking Woodward for changing his mind on fox hunting to support a ban. 

During the election campaign, Cameron accepted the offer of writing a regular column for The Guardians online section.  He won the seat with a 1.9% swing to the Conservatives, taking 22,153 votes (45%) to Labour candidate Michael Bartlet's 14,180 (28.8%), a majority of 7,973 (16.2%).  

Member of Parliament, 2001–05

Upon his election to Parliament, he served as a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, a prominent appointment for a newly elected MP. Cameron proposed that the Committee launch an inquiry into the law on drugs,  and urged the consideration of "radical options".  The report recommended a downgrading of Ecstasy from Class A to Class B, as well as moves towards a policy of 'harm reduction', which Cameron defended. 

Cameron determinedly attempted to increase his public visibility, offering quotations on matters of public controversy. He opposed the payment of compensation to Gurbux Singh, who had resigned as head of the Commission for Racial Equality after a confrontation with the police;  and commented that the Home Affairs Select Committee had taken a long time to discuss whether the phrase "black market" should be used.  However, he was passed over for a front-bench promotion in July 2002; Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith did invite Cameron and his ally George Osborne to coach him on Prime Minister's Questions in November 2002. The next week, Cameron deliberately abstained in a vote on allowing same-sex and unmarried couples to adopt children jointly, against a whip to oppose; his abstention was noted.  The wide scale of abstentions and rebellious votes destabilised the Duncan Smith leadership.

In June 2003, Cameron was appointed a shadow minister in the Privy Council Office as a deputy to Eric Forth, then Shadow Leader of the House. He also became a vice- chairman of the Conservative Party when Michael Howard took over the leadership in November of that year. He was appointed Opposition frontbench local government spokesman in 2004, before being promoted to the Shadow Cabinet that June as head of policy co-ordination. Later, he became Shadow Education Secretary in the post-election reshuffle. 

Daniel Finkelstein has said of the period leading up to Cameron's election as leader of the Conservative party that "a small group of us (myself, David Cameron, George Osborne, Michael Gove, Nick Boles, Nick Herbert I think, once or twice) used to meet up in the offices of Policy Exchange, eat pizza, and consider the future of the Conservative Party".  Cameron's relationship with Osborne is regarded as particularly close; Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi suggested the closeness of Osborne's relationship with Cameron meant the two effectively shared power during Cameron's time as Prime Minister. 

From February 2002 to August 2005 he was a non-executive director of Urbium PLC, operator of the Tiger Tiger bar chain. 

Conservative Party leadership

2005 leadership election

Following the Labour victory in the May 2005 general election, Michael Howard announced his resignation as leader of the Conservative Party and set a lengthy timetable for the leadership election. Cameron announced on 29 September 2005 that he would be a candidate. Parliamentary colleagues supporting him included Boris Johnson, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, Shadow Defence Secretary and deputy leader of the party Michael Ancram, Oliver Letwin  and former party leader William Hague.  His campaign did not gain wide support until his speech, delivered without notes, at the 2005 Conservative Party Conference. In the speech he vowed to make people "feel good about being Conservatives again" and said he wanted "to switch on a whole new generation."  His speech was well-received; The Daily Telegraph said speaking without notes "showed a sureness and a confidence that is greatly to his credit". 

In the first ballot of Conservative MPs on 18 October 2005, Cameron came second, with 56 votes, slightly more than expected; David Davis had fewer than predicted at 62 votes; Liam Fox came third with 42 votes; and Kenneth Clarke was eliminated with 38 votes. In the second ballot on 20 October 2005, Cameron came first with 90 votes; David Davis was second, with 57; and Liam Fox was eliminated with 51 votes.  All 198 Conservative MPs voted in both ballots.

The next stage of the election process, between Davis and Cameron, was a vote open to the entire party membership. Cameron was elected with more than twice as many votes as Davis and more than half of all ballots issued; Cameron won 134,446 votes on a 78% turnout, to Davis's 64,398.  Although Davis had initially been the favourite, it was widely acknowledged that his candidacy was marred by a disappointing conference speech.  Cameron's election as the Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition was announced on 6 December 2005. As is customary for an Opposition leader not already a member, upon election Cameron became a member of the Privy Council, being formally approved to join on 14 December 2005, and sworn of the Council on 8 March 2006. 

Reaction to Cameron as Leader

Cameron's relative youth and inexperience before becoming leader have invited satirical comparison with Tony Blair. Private Eye soon published a picture of both leaders on its front cover, with the caption "World's first face transplant a success".  On the left, the New Statesman unfavourably likened his "new style of politics" to Tony Blair's early leadership years.  Cameron was accused of paying excessive attention to appearance: ITV News broadcast footage from the 2006 Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth shows him wearing four different sets of clothes within a few hours.  In his Guardian column, comedy writer and broadcaster Charlie Brooker described the Conservative leader as "a hollow Easter egg with no bag of sweets inside" in April 2007. 

On the right of the party, Norman Tebbit, a former Conservative Chairman, likened Cameron to Pol Pot, "intent on purging even the memory of Thatcherism before building a New Modern Compassionate Green Globally Aware Party".  Quentin Davies MP, who defected from the Conservatives to Labour on 26 June 2007, branded him "superficial, unreliable and [with] an apparent lack of any clear convictions" and stated that David Cameron had turned the Conservative Party's mission into a "PR agenda".  Traditionalist conservative columnist and author Peter Hitchens wrote, "Mr Cameron has abandoned the last significant difference between his party and the established left", by embracing social liberalism.  Daily Telegraph correspondent and blogger Gerald Warner was particularly scathing about Cameron's leadership, saying that it alienated traditionalist conservative elements from the Conservative Party. 

Before he became Conservative leader, Cameron was reported to be known to friends and family as "Dave", though his preference is "David" in public.    Labour used the slogan Dave the Chameleon in their 2006 local elections party broadcast to portray Cameron as an ever-changing populist, which was criticised as negative campaigning by the conservative press including The Telegraph,  though Cameron asserted the broadcast had become his daughter's "favourite video". 

Shadow Cabinet appointments

His Shadow Cabinet appointments included MPs associated with the various wings of the party. Former leader William Hague was appointed to the Foreign Affairs brief, while both George Osborne and David Davis were retained, as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and Shadow Home Secretary respectively. Hague, assisted by Davis, stood in for Cameron during his paternity leave in February 2006. In June 2008 Davis announced his intention to resign as an MP, and was immediately replaced as Shadow Home Secretary by Dominic Grieve; Davis' surprise move was seen as a challenge to the changes introduced under Cameron's leadership. 

In January 2009 a reshuffle of the Shadow Cabinet was undertaken. The chief change was the appointment of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Kenneth Clarke as Shadow Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Secretary, David Cameron stating that "With Ken Clarke's arrival, we now have the best economic team." The reshuffle also saw eight other changes made. 

European Conservatives and Reformists

During his successful 2005 campaign to be elected Leader of the Conservative Party, Cameron pledged that the Conservative Party's Members of the European Parliament would leave the European People's Party group, which had a "federalist" approach to the European Union.  Once elected Cameron began discussions with right-wing and Eurosceptic parties in other European countries, mainly in eastern Europe, and in July 2006 he concluded an agreement to form the Movement for European Reform with the Czech Civic Democratic Party, leading to the formation of a new European Parliament group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, in 2009 after the European Parliament elections. 
Cameron attended a gathering at Warsaw's Palladium cinema celebrating the foundation of the alliance. 

In forming the caucus, which had 54 MEPs drawn from eight of the 27 EU member states, Cameron reportedly broke with two decades of Conservative co-operation with the centre-right Christian Democrats, the European People's Party (EPP),  on the grounds that they are dominated by European federalists and supporters of the Lisbon treaty. EPP leader Wilfried Martens, former Prime Minister of Belgium, has stated "Cameron's campaign has been to take his party back to the centre in every policy area with one major exception: Europe. ... I can't understand his tactics. Merkel and Sarkozy will never accept his Euroscepticism."

Shortlists for Parliamentary candidates

Similarly, Cameron's initial "A-List" of prospective parliamentary candidates was attacked by members of his party, and the policy was discontinued in favour of sex-balanced final shortlists. Before being discontinued, the policy had been criticised by senior Conservative MP and former Prisons Spokeswoman Ann Widdecombe as an "insult to women", and she had accused Cameron of "storing up huge problems for the future." 

2010 general election

The Conservatives had last won a general election in 1992. The general election of 2010 resulted in the Conservatives, led by Cameron, winning the largest number of seats (306). This was, however, 20 seats short of an overall majority and resulted in the nation's first hung parliament since February 1974. 

Talks between Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg led to an agreed Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. Cameron in late 2009 had urged the Liberal Democrats to join the Conservatives in a new "national movement" saying there was "barely a cigarette paper" between them on a large number of issues. The invitation was rejected at the time by the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, who said that the Conservatives were totally different from his party and that the Lib Dems were the true "progressives" in UK politics. 

Prime Minister

On 11 May 2010, following the resignation of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister and on his recommendation, Elizabeth II invited Cameron to form a government. At age 43, Cameron became the youngest Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812, beating the record previously set by Tony Blair in May 1997. In his first address outside 10 Downing Street, he announced his intention to form a coalition government, the first since the Second World War, with the Liberal Democrats.

Cameron outlined how he intended to "put aside party differences and work hard for the common good and for the national interest." As one of his first moves Cameron appointed Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, as Deputy Prime Minister on 11 May 2010. Between them, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats controlled 363 seats in the House of Commons, with a majority of 76 seats.  On 2 June 2010, when Cameron took his first session of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) as Prime Minister, he began by offering his support and condolences to those affected by the shootings in Cumbria. 

In June 2010 Cameron described the economic situation as he came to power as "even worse than we thought" and warned of "difficult decisions" to be made over spending cuts.  By the beginning of 2015 he was able to claim that his government's austerity programme had succeeded in halving the budget deficit, though critics described the claim as misleading since it was only true of the deficit measured as a percentage of GDP  

On 5 February 2011, Cameron criticised the failure of 'state multiculturalism', in his first speech as PM on radicalisation and the causes of terrorism.  In July 2015, he outlined a five-year strategy to counter Islamist extremism and subversive teachings. 

Cameron agreed to holding the Scottish independence referendum, 2014 and eliminated the "devomax" option from the ballot for a straight out yes or no vote. He supported the successful Better Together campaign. He had also backed a successful campaign to retain the status quo in a referendum on changing the voting system held at the request of his coalition partners.

He supported the introduction of gay marriage despite more of his own Conservative MPs voting against the move than for it, meaning the support of Lib Dem MPs in government and Labour MPs in opposition was required to allow it to pass. 

Earlier in his term he had managed to secure a huge majority for UK participation in UN-backed military action in Libya.  However, Cameron became the first prime minister in over 100 years to lose a foreign policy vote in the House of Commons over proposed military action against Assad's regime in Syria. 

2015 general election

On 7 May 2015, Cameron was re-elected UK Prime Minister with a majority in the Commons. The Conservative Party's decisive win in the general election was as a surprise victory, as most polls and commentators predicted the outcome would be too close to call and result in a second hung parliament.  Cameron said of his first term when returned as Prime Minister for a second term that he was "proud to lead the first coalition government in 70 years" and offered particular thanks to Clegg for his role in it.  Forming the first Conservative majority government since 1992, David Cameron became the first Prime Minister to be re-elected immediately after a full term with a larger popular vote share since Lord Salisbury at the 1900 general election.

In response to the November 2015 Paris attacks, Cameron secured the support of the House of Commons to extend air strikes against ISIS into Syria. 

2016 referendum and resignation

As promised in the election manifesto, Cameron set a date for a referendum on whether the UK should remain a member of the European Union, and announced that he would be campaigning for Britain to remain within a "reformed EU".  The terms of the UK's membership of the EU were re-negotiated, with agreement reached in February 2016. 

In the referendum of 23 June 2016, the British electorate voted in favour of leaving the European Union.    On 24 June, a few hours after the results became known, Cameron announced that he would resign the office of Prime Minister by the start of the Conservative Party Conference in October 2016.    Very intense criticism followed the realisation of just how much the referendum had split the country, with The Independent saying it was called to save Cameron's job and was an act of "indescribably selfish recklessness."  In late July, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee was told that Cameron had refused to allow the Civil service to make plans for Brexit, a decision the committee described as "an act of gross negligence." 

The Conservative Party leadership election was scheduled for 9 September and the new leader was expected to be in place by the autumn conference, set to begin on 2 October. On 11 July, following the withdrawal of Andrea Leadsom from the Conservative Party leadership election and the confirmation of Theresa May as the new leader of the Conservative Party, Cameron announced he would hold a final cabinet meeting on 12 July and then following a final Prime Minister's Questions submit his resignation to the Queen on the afternoon of 13 July. After his final Prime Minister's Questions, Cameron received a standing ovation from MPs; one of his final comments was, "I was the future once" – a reference to his 2005 quip to Tony Blair, "he was the future once". Cameron then submitted his resignation to the Queen later that day. 

Although no longer the PM, he has stated that he will continue in Parliament as a backbench Conservative MP.

Policies and views

Self-description of views

Cameron describes himself in December 2005 as a "modern compassionate conservative" and has spoken of a need for a new style of politics, saying that he was "fed up with the Punch and Judy politics of Westminster".  He is "certainly a big Thatcher fan, but I don't know whether that makes me a Thatcherite",  claiming to be a "liberal Conservative", though "not a deeply ideological person."  As Leader of the Opposition, Cameron asserted that he did not intend to oppose the government as a matter of course, and would offer his support in areas of agreement. He has urged politicians to concentrate more on improving people's happiness and "general well-being", instead of focusing solely on "financial wealth".  There were claims that he described himself to journalists at a dinner during the leadership contest as the "heir to Blair". 

In his first Conservative Conference speech as party leader in Bournemouth in 2006, he described the National Health Service as "one of the 20th Century's greatest achievements". He went on to say, "Tony Blair explained his priorities in three words: education, education, education. I can do it in three letters: N.H.S." He also talked about his severely disabled son, Ivan, concluding "So, for me, it is not just a question of saying the NHS is safe in my hands—of course it will be. My family is so often in the hands of the NHS, so I want them to be safe there." 

Cameron said that he believes in "spreading freedom and democracy, and supporting humanitarian intervention" in cases such as the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. However, he rejected neo-conservatism because, as a conservative, he recognises "the complexities of human nature, and will always be sceptical of grand schemes to remake the world."  A supporter of multilateralism as "a country may act alone—but it cannot always succeed alone", he believes multilateralism can take the form of acting through "NATO, the UN, the G8, the EU and other institutions", or through international alliances.  Cameron said that "If the West is to help other countries, we must do so from a position of genuine moral authority" and "we must strive above all for legitimacy in what we do."

He believes that British Muslims have a duty to integrate into British culture, but noted in an article published in 2007 that the Muslim community finds aspects such as high divorce rates and drug use uninspiring, and that "Not for the first time, I found myself thinking that it is mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian way of life, not the other way around."  In 2010 he appointed the first Muslim member of the British cabinet, Baroness Warsi, as a minister without portfolio, and in 2012 made her a special minister of state in foreign affairs. She resigned, however, in August 2014 over the government's handling of the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.

Whilst urging members of his party to support the coalition's proposals for same-sex marriage, Cameron said that he backed gay marriage not in spite of his conservatism but because he is a conservative, and claimed it was about equality.  In 2012, Cameron publicly apologised for Thatcher-era policies on homosexuality, specifically the introduction of the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which he described as "a mistake". 

Comments on other parties and politicians

Cameron criticised Gordon Brown (when Brown was Chancellor of the Exchequer) for being "an analogue politician in a digital age" and referred to him as "the roadblock to reform".  He said that John Prescott "clearly looks a fool" after Prescott's personal indiscretions were revealed in spring 2006, and wondered if the Deputy Prime Minister had broken the ministerial code.  During a speech to the Ethnic Media Conference on 29 November 2006, Cameron also described Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, as an "ageing far left politician" in reference to Livingstone's views on multiculturalism. 

As Prime Minister, he reacted to press reports that Brown could be the next head of the International Monetary Fund by hinting that he may block the appointment, citing the huge national debt that Brown left the country with as a reason for Brown not being suitable for the role. 

In April 2006, Cameron accused the UK Independence Party of being "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists, mostly,"  leading UKIP MEP Nigel Farage (who became leader in September of that year) to demand an apology for the remarks. Right-wing Conservative MP Bob Spink, who later defected to UKIP, also criticised the remarks,  as did The Daily Telegraph.  Cameron was seen encouraging Conservative MPs to join the standing ovation given to Tony Blair at the end of his last Prime Minister's Question Time; he had paid tribute to the "huge efforts" Blair had made and said Blair had "considerable achievements to his credit, whether it is peace in Northern Ireland or his work in the developing world, which will endure". 

In 2006, Cameron made a speech in which he described extremist Islamic organisations and the British National Party as "mirror images" to each other, both preaching "creeds of pure hatred".  Cameron is listed as being a supporter of Unite Against Fascism. 

In September 2015, after the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, Cameron called the party a "threat" to British national and economic security, on the basis of Corbyn's defence and fiscal policies. 

Political commentary

Allegations of social elitism

While Leader of the Conservative Party, Cameron has been accused of reliance on "old-boy networks", and conversely attacked by his party for the imposition of selective shortlists of women and ethnic minority prospective parliamentary candidates.

Some of Cameron's senior appointments, such as George Osborne as Chancellor of the Exchequer, are former members of the Bullingdon Club. Michael Gove conceded it was "ridiculous" how many fellow Cabinet ministers were old-Etonians, though he placed the blame on the failings of the state education system rather than Cameron.  However, Michael Mosbacher, co-founder of Standpoint magazine, wrote that Cameron's Cabinet has the lowest number of Etonians of any past Conservative government: "David Cameron's government is the least patrician, least wealthy and least public-school-educated—indeed the least Etonian Conservative-led government this country has ever seen". 

Poverty

In 2006 Cameron described poverty as a "moral disgrace"  and promised to tackle relative poverty.Eaton, George (24 June 2015). [http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/david-cameron-has-retreated-his-promises-child-poverty-will-it-cost-him "David Cameron has retreated from his promises on child poverty – but will it cost him?"]. New Statesman (London). In 2007 Cameron promised, "We can make British poverty history, and we will make British poverty history". Also in 2007 he stated "Ending child poverty is central to improving child well-being".  In 2015 Polly Toynbee questioned Cameron's commitment to tackling poverty, contrasting his earlier statements agreeing that "poverty is relative" with proposals to change the government's poverty measure, and saying that cuts in child tax credits would increase child poverty among low-paid working families. 

Food banks

The rapid growth in the use of food banks under David Cameron became one of the major criticisms of his administration, and a recurring theme at Prime Minister's Questions.   Cameron praised volunteers providing donated food as "part of what I call the Big Society", to which Labour leader Ed Miliband responded that he "never thought the Big Society was about feeding hungry children in Britain". 

In February 2014, 27 Anglican bishops together with leading Methodists and Quakers wrote an open letter to Cameron blaming government policy for a rise in the use of food banks. The letter asserted that "over half of people using food banks have been put in that situation by cutbacks to and failures in the benefit system, whether it be payment delays or punitive sanctions".  The government responded that delays in benefit processing had been reduced, with the proportion of benefits paid on time rising from 88–89% under Labour, to 96–97% in 2014.  Cameron said that the rise in food bank usage was due to the government encouraging Jobcentres and local authorities to promote them, and noted an OECD report which showed a fall in the proportion of people in Britain struggling to buy food. 

Expenses

During the MPs expenses scandal in 2009, Cameron said he would lead Conservatives in repaying "excessive" expenses and threatened to expel MPs that refused after the expense claims of several members of his shadow cabinet had been questioned:

One day later, The Daily Telegraph published figures showing over five years he had claimed £82,450 on his second home allowance.  Cameron repaid £680 claimed for repairs to his constituency home.  Although he was not accused of breaking any rules, Cameron was placed on the defensive over mortgage interest expense claims covering his constituency home, after a report in The Mail on Sunday suggested he could have reduced the mortgage interest bill by putting an additional £75000 of his own money towards purchasing the home in Witney instead of paying off an earlier mortgage on his London home.  Cameron said that doing things differently would not have saved the taxpayer any money, as he was paying more on mortgage interest than he was able to reclaim as expenses anyway He also spoke out in favour of laws giving voters the power to "recall" or "sack" MPs accused of wrongdoing. In April 2014, he was criticised for his handling of the expenses row surrounding Culture Secretary Maria Miller, when he rejected calls from fellow Conservative MPs to sack her from the front bench. 

Raising teaching standards

At the launch of the Conservative Party's education manifesto in January 2010, Cameron declared an admiration for the "brazenly elite" approach to education of countries such as Singapore and South Korea and expressed a desire to "elevate the status of teaching in our country". He suggested the adoption of more stringent criteria for entry to teaching and offered repayment of the loans of maths and science graduates obtaining first or 2.1 degrees from "good" universities.

Wes Streeting, then president of the National Union of Students, said "The message that the Conservatives are sending to the majority of students is that if you didn't go to a university attended by members of the Shadow Cabinet, they don't believe you're worth as much." 

Transport

Commenting on rail fare increases in January 2015, Cameron said "We've made sure that rail fares cannot go up by more than inflation. So the rail fare increase this year, as last year, is linked to inflation, and I think that's right. In previous years it's gone up by more than inflation. But, of course, what you're seeing on our railways is a £38bn investment project. And that money is coming, of course, from taxpayers, from the government, and from farepayers as well." He described the policies of his government as "the biggest investment in our roads since the 1970s, but in our railways since Victorian times". 

South Africa

In April 2009, The Independent reported that in 1989, while Nelson Mandela remained imprisoned under the apartheid regime, David Cameron had accepted a trip to South Africa paid for by an anti-sanctions lobby firm. A spokesperson for Cameron responded by saying that the Conservative Party was at that time opposed to sanctions against South Africa and that his trip was a fact-finding mission. However, the newspaper reported that Cameron's then superior at Conservative Research Department called the trip "jolly", saying that "it was all terribly relaxed, just a little treat, a perk of the job. The Botha regime was attempting to make itself look less horrible, but I don't regard it as having been of the faintest political consequence." Cameron distanced himself from his party's history of opposing sanctions against the regime. He was criticised by Labour MP Peter Hain, himself an anti-apartheid campaigner. 

Iraq War

In an interview on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross in 2006, Cameron said that he supported the decision of the then Labour Government to go to war in Iraq, and said that he thought supporters should "see it through".  He also supported a motion brought by the SNP and Plaid Cymru in 2006 calling for an inquiry into the government's conduct of the Iraq war. In 2011, he oversaw the withdrawal of British soldiers from Iraq. He has repeatedly called for the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war to conclude and publish its findings, saying "People want to know the truth". 

NATO military intervention in Libya

Libya–United Kingdom relations soured in 2011 with the outbreak of the Libyan Civil War. Cameron condemned the "appalling and unacceptable" violence used against anti-Gaddafi protesters.  After weeks of lobbying by the UK and its allies, on 17 March 2011 the United Nations Security Council approved a no-fly zone to prevent government forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi from carrying out air attacks on anti-Gaddafi rebels.  Two days later the UK and the United States fired more than 110 Tomahawk missiles at targets in Libya. 

Cameron has said he is "proud" of the role United Kingdom played in the overthrow of Gaddafi's government.  Cameron also stated that UK had played a "very important role",  adding that "a lot of people said that Tripoli was completely different to Benghazi and that the two don't get on—they were wrong. ... People who said 'this is all going to be an enormous swamp of Islamists and extremists'—they were wrong." 

In March 2016, with two main rival factions based in Tripoli and Benghazi continuing to fight, an Independent editorial noted that "there can be no question that Libya is broken. There are three nominal governments, none of which holds much authority. The economy is flatlining. Refugees flood to the Mediterranean. And Isis has put down roots in Sirte and, increasingly, Tripoli."   It was at this time that US President Barack Obama accused Cameron of allowing Libya to sink into a "mess", though in private the American leader bluntly describes post-intervention Libya as a "shit show". 

Military intervention in Iraq and Syria

In August 2013, Cameron lost a motion in favour of bombing Syrian armed forces in response to the Ghouta chemical attack, becoming the first prime minister to suffer such a foreign-policy defeat since 1782.  In September 2014, MPs passed a motion in favour of British planes joining, at the request of the Iraqi government, a bombing campaign against Islamic State (IS) targets in Iraq;  the motion explicitly expressed parliament's disapproval of UK military action in Syria.  Cameron promised that, before expanding UK air strikes to include IS units in Syria, he would seek parliamentary approval. 

In July 2015, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by Reprieve revealed that, without the knowledge of UK parliamentarians, RAF pilots had, in fact, been bombing targets in Syria, and that Cameron knew of this.  The prime minister, along with Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, faced strong criticism, including from Tory MPs, for not informing the Commons about this deployment; the Ministry of Defence said that the pilots concerned were "embedded" with foreign military forces, and so were "effectively" operating as such, while Fallon denied that MPs had been, as he put it, "kept in the dark".   The Reprieve FoI request also revealed that British drone pilots had been embedded, almost continuously, with American forces at Creech Air Force Base since 2008. These drone operators, who were "a gift of services", meaning the UK still paid their salaries and covered their expenses, had been carrying out operations that included reconnaissance in Syria to assist American strikes against IS. 

Fallon said that it was "illogical" for the UK not to bomb ISIL in Syria as the organisation does not "differentiate between Syria and Iraq" and is "organised and directed and administered from Syria".  Following the terrorist attacks on Paris in November 2015, for which Islamic State claimed responsibility, Cameron began pushing for a strategy for the Royal Air Force to bomb Syria in retaliation.  Cameron set out his case for military intervention to Parliament on 26 November, telling MPs that it was the only way to guarantee Britain's safety and would be part of a "comprehensive" strategy to defeat IS. On 3 December 2015 MPs voted 397–223 in favour of launching air strikes against ISIL targets in Syria. The vote for military action was supported by all but seven members of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, as well as 66 Labour MPs who backed the government in defiance of their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who had expressed his opposition to air strikes. 

The Falklands

In 2013, in response to Argentina's calls for negotiations over the Falkland Islands' sovereignty, a referendum was called asking Falkland Islanders whether they supported the continuation of their status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom.  With a turnout of 91.94%, an overwhelming 99.8% voted to remain a British territory with only three votes against. 

In light of this, Cameron said:

India

Cameron has been a strong advocate of increased ties between India and the United Kingdom, describing Indian–British relations as the "New Special Relationship" in 2010.  

In October 2012, as Narendra Modi rose to prominence in India, the UK rescinded its boycott of the then-Gujarat state Chief Minister over religious riots in Gujarat in 2002 that left more than 2,000 dead,  and in November 2013, Cameron commented that he was "open" to meeting Modi. 

Modi was later elected as Prime Minister in a landslide majority, leading to Cameron calling Modi and congratulating him on the "election success",  one of the first Western leaders to do so. 

Sri Lanka

Cameron reiterated calls for an independent investigation into the alleged war crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War.  "There needs to be proper inquiries into what happened at the end of the war, there needs to be proper human rights, democracy for the Tamil minority in that country" Cameron stated.   He stated that, if this investigation was not completed by March 2014, he would press for an independent international inquiry.    This followed a visit to Jaffna, a war-ravaged town in the northern part of Sri Lanka; Cameron was the first foreign leader to visit Jaffna since the island once colonised by Britain became independent in 1948.   Cameron was mobbed by demonstrators, mostly women, seeking his assistance in tracing missing relatives.  

China

In 2015, Theresa May's political adviser Nick Timothy wrote an article to express his worry that People's Republic of China was effectively buying Britain's silence on allegations of Chinese human rights abuse and opposed China's involvement in sensitive sectors such as the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. He criticizes David Cameron and George Osborne of "selling our national security to China" without rational concerns and "the Government seems intent on ignoring the evidence and presumably the advice of the security and intelligence agencies."  

Turkey and Israel

In a speech in Ankara in July 2010, Cameron stated unequivocally his support for Turkey's accession to the EU, citing economic, security and political considerations, and claimed that those who opposed Turkish membership were driven by "protectionism, narrow nationalism or prejudice".   In that speech, he was also critical of Israeli action during the Gaza flotilla raid and its Gaza policy, and repeated his opinion that Israel had turned Gaza into a "prison camp", having previously referred to Gaza as "a giant open prison".  These views were met with mixed reactions.    The Cameron government does not formally recognise the Ottoman Empire's massacres of Armenians as a "genocide". 

During the EU referendum campaign, Cameron stated that Turkey was unlikely to be ready to join the EU 'until the year 3000' at its current rate of progress.[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de1efd42-2001-11e6-aa98-db1e01fabc0c.html#axzz4FPBbkQMD Turkey unlikely to join EU 'until the year 3000', says Cameron - FT.com]

At the end of May 2011, Cameron stepped down as patron of the Jewish National Fund,   becoming the first British prime minister not to be patron of the charity in the 110 years of its existence.

In a speech in 2011 Cameron said: "You have a Prime Minister whose commitment and determination to work for peace in Israel is deep and strong. Britain will continue to push for peace, but will always stand up for Israel against those who wish her harm". He said he wanted to reaffirm his "unshakable" belief in Israel within the same message.  He also voiced his opposition to the Goldstone Report, claiming it had been biased against Israel and not enough blame had been placed on Hamas.

In March 2014, during his first visit to Israel as Prime Minister, Cameron addressed Israel's Knesset in Jerusalem, where he offered his full support for peace efforts between Israelis and Palestinians, hoping a two-state solution might be achieved.[http://www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-british-pm-david-camerons-knesset-speech/ "Full text of British PM David Cameron's Knesset speech"]. Times of Israel (Jerusalem). 12 March 2014. He also made clear his rejection of trade or academic boycotts against Israel,  acknowledged Israel's right to defend its citizens as "a right enshrined in international law," and made note of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, as "the moment when the State of Israel went from a dream to a plan, Britain has played a proud and vital role in helping to secure Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people." During his two-day visit, he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  Senior Foreign Office minister The Baroness Warsi resigned over the Cameron government's decision not to condemn Israel for the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, saying that the government's "approach and language during the current crisis in Gaza is morally indefensible." 

Saudi Arabia

Cameron supports Britain's close relationship with Saudi Arabia.  In January 2015, Cameron travelled to the Saudi capital Riyadh to pay his respects following the death of the nation's King Abdullah.

According to WikiLeaks, Cameron initiated a secret deal with Saudi Arabia ensuring both were elected onto the U.N. Human Rights Council.  Cameron's government announced "firm political support" for the 2015 Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen against the Shi'a Houthis,  re-supplying the Saudi military with weapons and providing them with training.   

LGBT rights

Back in 2010 David Cameron was given a score of 36% in favour of lesbian, gay and bisexual equality by Stonewall.  Prior to 2005, David Cameron was opposed to gay rights, calling it a "fringe agenda" and attacking the then-Prime Minister Tony Blair for "moving heaven and earth to allow the promotion of homosexuality in our schools" by repealing the anti-gay Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988.  Cameron is also recorded by Hansard as having voted against same-sex adoption rights in 2002, but he denies this, claiming he abstained from the three-line whip imposed on him by his party. In 2008, he wanted lesbians who receive IVF treatment to be required to name a father figure, which received condemnation from LGBT equality groups. However, Cameron supported commitment for gay couples in a 2005 speech, and in October 2011 urged Conservative MPs to support gay marriage. 

In November 2012, Cameron and Nick Clegg agreed to fast-track legislation for introducing same-sex marriage.  Cameron stated that he wanted to give religious groups the ability to host gay marriage ceremonies, and that he did not want to exclude gay people from a "great institution".  In 2013, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 became law despite opposition from more than half of his fellow Conservative MPs, including Cabinet ministers Owen Paterson and David Jones.  He also subsequently appointed two women who had voted against same-sex marriage as ministers in the Government Equalities Office, Nicky Morgan and Caroline Dinenage following the 2015 general election. 

In August 2013, he rejected calls by Stephen Fry and others to strip Russia from hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics due to its anti-gay laws.  Cameron did not attend the games but denied it was a boycott in protest at Russia's laws, having previously raised the issue of gay rights in the country with Vladimir Putin. 

Immigration

Cameron said immigration from outside the EU should be subject to annual limits. He said in July 2013 that "in the last decade we have had an immigration policy that's completely lax. The pressure it puts on our public services and communities is too great."  In 2015, The Independent reported, "The Conservatives have failed spectacularly to deliver their pledge to reduce net migration to less than 100,000 a year. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced a net flow of 298,000 migrants to the UK in the 12 months to September 2014—up from 210,000 in the previous year." 

Allegations of recreational drug use

During the leadership election, allegations were made that Cameron had used cannabis and cocaine recreationally before becoming an MP.  Pressed on this point during the BBC television programme Question Time, Cameron expressed the view that everybody was allowed to "err and stray" in their past.  During his 2005 Conservative leadership campaign he addressed the question of drug consumption by remarking that "I did lots of things before I came into politics which I shouldn't have done. We all did."

Defence cuts

In 2014, Cameron dismissed warnings that his cuts to the UK defence budget had left it less than a "first class-player in terms of defence" and no longer a "full partner" to the United States. 

In the July 2015 budget Chancellor George Osborne announced that the UK defence spending would meet the NATO target of 2% of GDP. 

Criticism of use of statutory instruments

In January 2016, The Independent said there had been an increase of over 50% in the use of statutory instruments since 2010. Lord Jopling deplored the behaviour which he called an abuse whilst The Baroness Smith of Basildon asked whether it was the start of "constitutional Gerrymandering." 

Political relationships

Plots against leadership

In the 2012 local elections, the Conservative Party's share of the vote fell from 35% to 31%, losing control of several councils including Plymouth, Southampton, Harlow, Redditch, Worcester and Great Yarmouth, after a difficult few months for the government, with Labour increasing its lead in the polls. This led to concerns from Conservative MPs about Cameron's leadership and his electability. David Davies, the chairman of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, accused the Tory leadership of "incompetence" and hinted that it could risk Cameron's leadership.  Nadine Dorries warned the Prime Minister that a leadership challenge could happen. 

Later that year, Brian Binley openly said that Cameron's leadership was like being a "maid" to the Liberal Democrats, and accused him of leading the party to defeat. In January 2013 it was revealed that Adam Afriyie was planning his own bid for the Tory leadership with the support of fellow MPs Mark Field, Bill Wiggin, Chris Heaton-Harris, Patrick Mercer, Jonathan Djanogly and Dan Byles. The Times and ConservativeHome revealed that a 'rebel reserve' of 55 Tory MPs gave firm pledges to a co-ordinating MP to support a motion of 'no confidence' and write to Brady simultaneously, which would be enough MPs to trigger a vote of no confidence as the level of MPs needed to trigger such vote is 46.  Andrew Bridgen openly called for a vote of confidence in Cameron's leadership and claimed that the Prime Minister had a "credibility problem" but he dropped his bid for a contest a year later. 

Cameron and Andy Coulson

In 2007 Cameron appointed Andy Coulson, former editor of the News of the World, as his director of communications. Coulson had resigned as the paper's editor following the conviction of a reporter in relation to illegal phone hacking, although stating that he knew nothing about it.  In June 2010 Downing Street confirmed Coulson's annual salary as £140,000, the highest pay of any special adviser to UK Government. 

In January 2011 Coulson left his post, saying coverage of the phone-hacking scandal was making it difficult to give his best to the job. In July 2011 he was arrested and questioned by police in connection with further allegations of illegal activities at the News of the World, and released on bail. Despite a call to apologise for hiring Coulson by the leader of the opposition, Cameron defended the appointment, saying that he had taken a conscious choice to give someone who had screwed up a second chance.  On 20 July, in a special parliamentary session at the House of Commons, arranged to discuss the News International phone hacking scandal, Cameron said that he "regretted the furore" that had resulted from his appointment of Coulson, and that "with hindsight" he would not have hired him.  Coulson was detained and charged with perjury by Strathclyde Police on 30 May 2012. Coulson was convicted of conspiracy to hack phones in June 2014. Prior to the jury handing down their verdict, Cameron issued a "full and frank" apology for hiring him, saying "I am extremely sorry that I employed him. It was the wrong decision and I am very clear about that." The judge hearing Coulson's trial was critical of the prime minister, pondering whether the intervention was out of ignorance or deliberate, and demanded an explanation. 

Cameron and Lord Ashcroft

Although Lord Ashcroft played a significant role in the 2010 election, he was not offered a ministerial post. In June 2012, shortly before a major Tory rebellion on House of Lords reform,  journalist Peter Oborne credited Ashcroft with "stopping the Coalition working" by moving policy on Europe, welfare, education, taxation to the right. According to Oborne, Ashcroft, owner of both the ConservativeHome and PoliticsHome websites and a "brutal critic of the Coalition from the start", had established "megaphone presence" in the on-line media. He believes Cameron's philosophy of liberal conservatism has been destroyed by "coordinated attacks on the Coalition" and "the two parties are no longer trying to pretend that they are governing together."

In The Observer, Andrew Rawnsley commented that he believes that Ashcroft uses carefully timed opinion polls to "generate publicity", "stir trouble for the prime minister" and influence the direction of the party. In 2015 Ashcroft released Call Me Dave, an unauthorised biography of Cameron written with journalist Isabel Oakeshott, which attracted significant media attention for various lurid allegations about Cameron's time at university. The book includes an anonymous anecdote about Cameron, now referred to as Piggate.  No evidence for the anecdote has been produced. Many commentators have described the accusations as a "revenge job" by Ashcroft, who was not offered a senior role in government when Cameron came to power in 2010. Ashcroft initially claimed the book was "not about settling scores", while Oakeshott said that they had held back publication until after the 2015 general election to avoid damaging Cameron and the Conservatives' electoral chances.  Ashcroft subsequently admitted that the initiation allegations "may have been case of mistaken identity" and has stated that he has a personal "beef" with Cameron.      Cameron later went on to deny these allegations and stated that Ashcroft's reasons for writing the book were clear and the public could see clearly through it. 

Standing in opinion polls

Before premiership

In the first month of Cameron's leadership, the Conservative Party's standing in opinion polls rose, with several pollsters placing it ahead of the ruling Labour Party. While the Conservative and Labour Parties drew even in early spring 2006, following the May 2006 local elections various polls once again generally showed Conservative leads. 

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister in June 2007, Labour moved ahead and its ratings grew steadily at Cameron's expense, an ICM poll  in July showing Labour with a seven-point lead. An ICM poll   in September saw Cameron rated the least popular of the three main party leaders. A YouGov poll for Channel 4 one week later, after the Labour Party Conference, extended the Labour lead to 11 points, prompting further speculation of an early election. 

Following the Conservative Party Conference in October 2007, the Conservatives drew level with Labour.  When Brown declared he would not call an election for the autumn,  a decline in his and Labour's standings followed. At the end of the year a series of polls showed improved support for the Conservatives giving them an 11-point lead over Labour. By May 2008, following the worst local election performance from the Labour Party in 40 years, the Conservative lead was up to 26 points, the largest since 1968. 

In late 2009, the Conservative lead decreased and by January 2010 some polls were predicting a hung parliament, which was the eventual result. 

During premiership, 2010–16

First term

A YouGov poll on party leaders conducted on 9–10 June 2011 found 44% of the electorate thought he was doing well and 50% thought he was doing badly, whilst 38% thought he would be the best PM and 35% did not know. 

Until his veto on treaty changes to the European Union in December 2011 amid the Eurozone crisis, most opinion polls that year had shown a slim Labour lead. Many opinion polls showed that the majority of voters felt that Cameron made the right decision. Subsequent opinion polls have shown a narrow lead for the Conservatives ahead of Labour. 

In the run up to the 2015 election, Cameron achieved his first net positive approval rating in four years, with a YouGov poll finding 47% of voters thought he was doing well as prime minister compared with 46% who thought he was doing badly. 

Second term

In September 2015, a Opinium poll had similar results to the one shortly before the election, with voters split with 42% who approved of him and 41% who did not.  Under their new leader Jeremy Corbyn, Labour support continued to lag behind that of the Conservatives.   Cameron had significantly better net approval ratings in polls conducting in December and January (getting -6 in both) than Corbyn (who got -38 and -39).  However, following the Panama Papers leak in April 2016, his personal approval ratings fell below Corbyn's. 

Resignation

Following the European Union membership referendum of 2016, Cameron announced his intention to resign as Prime Minister before the party's autumn conference, starting 2 October  that year. Subsequently, the Party scheduled the leadership election to be completed by 9 September 2016. Following Theresa May's election as Conservative leader on 11 July, Cameron announced that he would tender his resignation to the Queen on 13 July, following Prime Minister's Questions.

Cameron has made it clear that the next Prime Minister should activate article 50 and begin negotiations with the EU.  The PM was in Brussels on 28 June 2016 for his final summit with the EU and planned to address members. "I'll be explaining that Britain will be leaving the European Union but I want that process to be as constructive as possible ...".

Personal life

Family

Cameron is married to Samantha Gwendoline Sheffield, the daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield, 8th Baronet, and Annabel Lucy Veronica Jones (now Viscountess Astor). A Marlborough College school friend of Cameron's sister Clare, Samantha accepted Clare's invitation to accompany the Cameron family on holiday in Tuscany, Italy, after graduating from Bristol School of Creative Arts. It was then David and Samantha's romance started. They were married on 1 June 1996 at the Church of St Augustine of Canterbury, East Hendred, Oxfordshire, five years before Cameron was elected to parliament.
The Camerons have had four children. Their first, Ivan Reginald Ian, was born on 8 April 2002 in Hammersmith and Fulham, London, with a rare combination of cerebral palsy and a form of severe epilepsy called Ohtahara syndrome, requiring round-the-clock care. Recalling the receipt of this news, Cameron was quoted as saying: "The news hits you like a freight train ... You are depressed for a while because you are grieving for the difference between your hopes and the reality. But then you get over that, because he's wonderful."  Ivan was cared for at the specialist NHS Cheyne Day Centre in West London, which closed shortly after he left it. Ivan died at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, on 25 February 2009, aged six. 

The Camerons have two daughters, Nancy Gwen (born 2004) and Florence Rose Endellion (born 24 August 2010),  and a son, Arthur Elwen (born 2006).  Cameron took paternity leave when his son was born, and this decision received broad coverage.  It was also stated that Cameron would be taking paternity leave after his second daughter was born. His second daughter was born on 24 August 2010, three weeks prematurely, while the family was on holiday in Cornwall. Her third given name, Endellion, is taken from the village of St Endellion near where the Camerons were holidaying.  

In early May 2008, the Camerons decided to enrol their daughter Nancy at a state primary school. For three years before that they had been attending its associated church, St Mary Abbots,  near the Cameron family home in North Kensington.  Cameron's constituency home is in Dean, Oxfordshire, and the Camerons have been described as key members of the Chipping Norton set.

On 8 September 2010, it was announced that Cameron would miss Prime Minister's Questions in order to fly to southern France to see his father, Ian Cameron, who had suffered a stroke with coronary complications. Later that day, with David and other family members at his bedside, Ian died.  On 17 September 2010, Cameron attended a private ceremony for the funeral of his father in Berkshire, which prevented him from hearing the address of Pope Benedict XVI in Westminster Hall, an occasion he would otherwise have attended. 

Inheritance and family wealth

In October 2010, David Cameron inherited £300,000 from his father's will. The Camerons' family fortune was built up by his late father, Ian Cameron, who had worked as a stockbroker in the City. Ian Cameron used multimillion-pound investment funds based in offshore tax havens, such as Jersey, Panama City, and Geneva, to increase the family wealth. In 1979 he took advantage of the end of capital controls made by Margaret Thatcher during her first month in power, which made it lawful to take money out of the country without it being taxed or subject to any financial controls by the UK government.     In 1982, Ian Cameron created the Panamanian Blairmore Holdings Inc. an offshore investment fund, valued at about $20 million in 1988, "not liable to taxation on its income or capital gains", which used bearer shares until 2006. 

In April 2016, following the Panama Papers financial documents leak, David Cameron faced calls to resign after he was forced to admit that he and his wife Samantha profited from Ian Cameron's offshore fund.  He owned £31,500 of shares in the fund and sold them for a profit of £19,000 shortly before becoming Prime Minister in 2010.  The former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, even argued that Cameron "shouldn't just resign, he should be sent to prison".  David Cameron argued that the fund was set up in Panama so that people who wanted to invest in dollar-denominated shares and companies could do so.  Cameron had personally intervened in 2013 to water down a planned EU crackdown on tax evasion. 

Thousands of protesters assembled in London on 9 April 2016 to demand Cameron's resignation.    A second protest demanding Cameron's resignation followed on 16 April 2016.  

An estimate of his worth is , though this figure excludes the six-figure legacies Cameron is expected to inherit from both sides of his family. 

Leisure

Before becoming prime minister, Cameron regularly used his bicycle to commute to work. In early 2006, he was photographed cycling to work, followed by his driver in a car carrying his belongings. His Conservative Party spokesperson subsequently said that this was a regular arrangement for Cameron at the time. 
Cameron is an occasional jogger and in 2009 raised funds for charities by taking part in the Oxford 5K and the Great Brook Run. 

Cameron supports Aston Villa,  although at a press conference on 25 April 2015 jokingly claimed he would rather people support West Ham United – who wear the same colours as Villa – than Manchester United. This "brain fade" (as Cameron himself called his slip-up) received widespread Twitter coverage under the name '#villagate'.  Although a Villa supporter, he was photographed celebrating Chelsea's victory over Bayern Munich in the 2012 UEFA Champions League Final. The match took place during the 38th G8 summit, and Cameron celebrated an English victory while in the same room as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a noted football fan.   

Cameron is also a keen cricket fan and has appeared on Test Match Special. 

Faith

At a Q&A in August 2013, Cameron described himself as a practising Christian and an active member of the Church of England.  On religious faith in general he has said: "I do think that organised religion can get things wrong but the Church of England and the other churches do play a very important role in society."  He says he considers the Bible "a sort of handy guide" on morality.  He views Britain as a "Christian country" and aims to put faith back into politics. 

Titles and honours

Styles

* David Cameron Esq (1966–2001)
* David Cameron MP (2001–2005)
* The Rt Hon David Cameron MP (2005–)

Honours

*  2012: Order of Abdulaziz al Saud Medal of Excellence 

Ancestry
Baroness Margaret Thatcher Lady Thatcher Margret thatcher The Baroness Thatcher Margret Thatcher The Lady Thatcher Margaret Tatcher Margaret Thatcher Mrs T Mrs Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher Mrs. T Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven Margaret Thatcer Margaret Thatcher's Mrs Finchley Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Thatcherian Margaret Thacher Margaret Thatcher bibliography Margaret Thatcher Day M thatcher Lady T Maggie Thatcher Margaret Hilda Thatcher Milk snatcher Baroness The Margaret Thatcher Margaret Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher Margaret Hilda Roberts Thatcher Margeret Thatcher Margareth Thatcher Mrs Denis Thatcher Margaret Hilda Roberts Mrs. Thatcher Milk Snatcher Margaret Thatcher Library Margaret thatcher Baroness Thatcher Margeret thatcher
margaret hilda thatcher margaret hilda thatcher baroness thatcher baroness thatcher margaret thatcher margaret thatcher s margaret tatcher prime minister margaret thatcher margaret thatcher day maggie thatcher mrs thatcher m thatcher thatcherian lady thatcher mrs finchley baroness margaret thatcher margaret thatcher library margareth thatcher margret thatcher mrs t baroness thatcher of kesteven milk snatcher margaret hilda roberts margaret thatcer margaret thacher margeret thatcher margaret thatcher baroness thatcher margaret hilda roberts thatcher mrs denis thatcher margaret thatcher bibliography lady t
margaret thatcher
WikipediaEntity
Margaret Thatcher
 Following is sex at the nitty and Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye Nye