Reflections on 10 downing street, past and present | thearticle

A sad reminder of another era in 10 Downing Street is the death of Tessa Gaisman, who worked there with Margaret Thatcher for a decade, from 1979 to 1989, first as a typist and then as her

Diary Secretary. For those who knew her even slightly, Tessa was a deeply impressive woman in her own right, dazzling in her range of cultural interests and munificent in her hospitality.

After leaving No 10 she and her husband, Jonathan Gaisman QC, helped to run the International Music Seminar at Prussia Cove in Cornwall. Her death from breast cancer at the tragically early

age of 67 cuts short a remarkable life of devoted and spirited service to politics and music. The _Times_ obituary (behind a paywall) observes that Mrs Thatcher’s tenure “was a time of fewer

garden parties in No 10 than today and less drinking, although Gaisman and her colleagues saw it as part of their jobs to rustle up drinks and even meals for the Prime Minister” — who,

however, saw it as part of her job to help with the washing up. The lines between civil servants and political staff in Downing Street were even then somewhat blurred, partly because Mrs

Thatcher inspired intense loyalty, especially among the “Garden Room girls”, of whom Tessa had been one. “It was because she was always kind to them,” she told Charles Moore, Mrs T’s

official biographer. In his interview with John Ware, published here in TheArticle, Lord Turnbull — who served as Principal Private Secretary to Mrs Thatcher and later as Cabinet Secretary

under Tony Blair — is scathing about Boris Johnson’s style of government. He contrasts Mrs Thatcher’s work ethic with that of the present PM, whom he describes as “an inherent sort of

cheat”, with a “promiscuous” relationship to the truth. Lord Turnbull deplores Boris Johnson for “demeaning” his office and for treating senior advisers such as Lord Geidt “shabbily”. Asked

if Mrs Thatcher had not also held parties at Downing Street, Lord Turnbull replied: “There were clearly parties — promotions, resignations. What there wasn’t were discos with music going on

past midnight. Now just imagine it, you are in No 10 and you set a disco going and up there is Mrs Thatcher, probably still awake and reading her papers. Are you going to take a chance?

She’d have come down in her dressing gown and told everyone to go home.” Such a withering critique of a sitting Prime Minister by a retired Cabinet Secretary is surely unprecedented. Yet is

the criticism fair? Mrs Thatcher’s Downing Street, as some of the anecdotes in Tessa Gaisman’s obituary testify, was an altogether different place: not only due to her uniquely commanding

character, but because those were more deferential and more innocent times. A role such as that played by Dominic Cummings for the first year of this administration would have been

inconceivable then, if only on account of his insubordination. And it is hard to imagine any PM today having to be gently corrected by her staff as Mrs Thatcher was after repeating a phrase

she had misheard as: “He couldn’t organise a pussy cat in a brewery.” Autres temps, autres moeurs may seem a feeble excuse for Boris Johnson’s attitude to the Covid rules, but the fact is

that the Downing Street machine is not only bigger but also less manageable than it was in the 1980s. In his day, Sir Tony Blair was also contrasted unfavourably with Mrs Thatcher for the

practice of “sofa government” and for weakening the role of Cabinet in order to make his own office more “presidential”. In the teeth of protests, this process has only accelerated over the

past dozen years of Conservative governments. Now Jacob Rees-Mogg has advanced the theory that “we have moved, for better or worse, to an essentially presidential system and that therefore

the mandate [of the Prime Minister] is essentially personal.” Hence Leader of the Commons believes that “the change of leader requires a general election”. Whether or not one agrees with

Rees-Mogg — and Lord Finkelstein is wrong to dismiss his argument as self-interested — there is surely a strong case for treating the electorate with less condescension than the former

mandarins and media grandees who moralise about Boris Johnson’s character and conduct. The voters knew what he was like, they had the choice of electing Jeremy Corbyn, the Lenin of Islington

North, and they voted for Boris instead. The tendency of the people to prefer Cavaliers to Roundheads is a  characteristic of British democracy, however infuriating it may be to those who

feel that they know better what is good for us. One more contrast between the Thatcher and Johnson eras is prompted by Tessa Gaisman’s recollections. She was summoned home from holiday in

1979 when Airey Neave was assassinated by Irish Republicans at Westminster; she was at Harrods when an IRA bomb exploded in 1983; she was with the Prime Minister in 1984 when they blew up

the Grand Hotel in Brighton (and heard Mrs Thatcher say just after the blast: “That was meant for me”); and she was deeply affected by the murder of the PM’s first PPS, Ian Gow, in 1990.

Until the IRA’s campaign of terrorism, No 10 was much more accessible to the public; indeed, Mrs Thatcher was much criticised for installing security gates at the entrance to Downing Street.

Since then, the heart of the government machine has become ever more hermetically sealed; both outsiders and insiders often comment on its “bunker mentality”. This gradual retreat from the

outside world reached its apogee during the pandemic. Under lockdown conditions, the Downing Street “bubble” was so cut-off that it may genuinely not have occurred to most of its denizens

how their convivial behaviour and casual disregard for Covid rules would look, once it was exposed to scrutiny. They may have been told that the rules did not apply on the Crown estate, of

which No 10 is a part. Boris and Carrie Johnson are actually quite unlikely to have knowingly broken the rules, but they may have lost sight of the fact — the most fundamental fact of our

unwritten constitution — that nobody in Britain is above the law. Mrs Thatcher could still run 10 Downing Street like a private office, but the crisis of mismanagement precipitated by the

pandemic (“Partygate”) shows that its transformation into a Department of State, however undesirable, had become unavoidable. There may be a case, as Sir Bernard Jenkin has suggested, for

slimming down the size of No 10. We may hanker after the days when Mrs Thatcher could inspire both absolute loyalty and unquestioning obedience among staff, almost all of whom she knew

personally. But those halcyon days cannot and will never return. Boris Johnson says that he will “look in the mirror” — and so, of course, he should. But the same applies to the whole

country. The electorate chose this Prime Minister, warts and all, by a substantial majority. It is undemocratic, even unconstitutional, to demand that he should be hounded out of office

merely because his conduct is judged unbecoming by a self-appointed jury of the great and good. As long as he can command a majority in Parliament, he should be allowed to get on with the

job.