Latest news with #TedHeath
Daily Mail
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
ANDREW PIERCE: Celebrate Mrs T! Just what would grumpy Ted say?
The feud between Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher, who ousted him as Tory leader, was one of the most long-running and rancorous in politics. So what a nice surprise to learn that the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation, set up to promote his memory, is to honour the Iron Lady. Next month they will mark the centenary of her birth with a tribute at the Sarah Thorne Theatre in Broadstairs, the genteel seaside resort in Kent where Heath was born in 1925. There will be a discussion chaired by Iain Dale, who has written a new biography of her. The panel on July 20 includes John Redwood, who ran Mrs T's Downing Street policy unit, Virginia Bottomley, who served in her government, and veteran MP Roger Gale, who – as a former TV producer – advised the Iron Lady on how to conduct herself when parliament was televised in 1989. Steve Nallon, the voice of Maggie for Spitting Image, will also be on the panel. Michael MacManus, who worked for Heath and Thatcher, said: 'I don't think my fellow trustees ever expected to stage an event celebrating Mrs T, but I think it's a great departure.' Truss could make a dram out of a crisis Much mockery of 49-day PM Liz Truss after she promoted an Irish whiskey brand alongside bare-knuckle fighter Dougie Joyce, once jailed for punching a pensioner. Sir Roderic Lyne, our former ambassador to Russia, suggests Truss might follow the example of Alec Douglas-Home after his 14 months in No 10: 'Perhaps she could take up salmon fishing like Douglas-Home. It goes down very well with a wee dram.' What a bunch of heels Labour MPs were cock-a-hoop after Prime Minister's Questions last week amid suggestions they had discovered Kemi Badenoch's 'Achilles heel'. They claimed they could see the Tory leader had forgotten to remove a 'bargain sale' label from the sole of one her shoes. Quipped one Labourite: 'She must know she's on the way out and will soon lose that nice extra salary as Opposition leader. She's already cutting back on essentials!' But is this yet another Labour dirty trick? The Tory leader's office certainly thinks so. The footwear was from M&S, said a source. And there was no such 'bargain' tag upon them. Flushed with Labour's surprise success in last week's Scottish Parliament by-election, party insiders know who to thank for victory over the SNP. 'Virtually every Labour MP came up to campaign in Hamilton. The only one who didn't was Keir Starmer – so it definitely was Keir 'wot won it',' sniped one. Labour historians noted that the Govan shipyard, where Starmer outlined his defence strategy last week, was earmarked for closure by the Heath Tory government in 1971. It was saved after a 'work-in' organised by Communist union leaders Jimmy Airlie and Jimmy Reid. Lefty Labour MPs grumble that the massive expansion in defence spending, which will benefit the Govan yard, will be paid for by trimming benefits – the sort of cuts those Communist diehards would have fought to resist. Labour MP Markus Campbell-Savours may now sport a Trotskyite beard, but he wants reform of the House of Lords to be delayed. Young Markus should perhaps have declared a family interest. His father Dale, a former Labour MP, is now a life peer. The status quo suits the Campbell-Savours family just fine. Meanwhile, peers are feathering their nests. Last week they increased their hotel expenses allowance from £103 to £125 a night. That's well above the rate of inflation.
The Independent
02-04-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Rats! Why Angela Rayner must sort out Birmingham's striking binmen
The echoes from Labour's history are unfortunate. Harold Wilson was elected in 1974 because his was the party of the trade unions. The voters thought he would be able to calm the wave of strikes, which Ted Heath had been unable to control. Wilson settled the miners' dispute, but he and Jim Callaghan were unable to persuade the unions to reform themselves – Callaghan's phrase, 'free collective vandalism', rings through the decades – and the Labour government ended in the misery of the Winter of Discontent, with rubbish piling up on the streets of London. If the current strike by refuse collectors in Birmingham had been in the capital, it would have attracted more media attention. But the crisis is serious and is starting to damage the Labour government. Inevitably, reports of 'rats the size of cats', as when the bin bags piled high in Leicester Square in February 1979, prompt public alarm and demands that the government step in. We can tell that the Birmingham dispute is damaging to the Labour government because Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has strayed beyond his brief again, posting a photo on social media comparing the rubbish on Labour-controlled Birmingham city council's side of a road with the rubbish-free side in Conservative Bromsgrove. But we didn't need Jenrick's intervention to see how the dispute has all the ingredients to make a toxic brew, especially for Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister, responsible for local government and trade unionism's representative at the cabinet table. She is proud of her background as a tough negotiator in the tradition of the party of organised labour. She came into politics as a union rep for care workers in Unison in local government. Yet when her department is asked about what is going on in Birmingham, it says only that it is 'monitoring the situation closely'. She needs to get on the phone to Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, the union that is in dispute with Birmingham city council over its attempt to make the workforce more efficient. The council seems to be powerless in the face of industrial action by a small group of workers. This week it declared a 'major incident', but all that seems to mean is that it can ask neighbouring councils for help – and they cannot resolve the dispute that is the cause of the problem. The council's finances have been weakened by huge payouts for historical equal-pay claims. The only 'assistance' provided by central government has been to allow it to raise its council tax by more than the usual 5 per cent limit. So this week Birmingham residents face not only rat-infested streets but council tax bills 7.5 per cent higher than last year. So far, Rayner has sent out Jim McMahon, her junior minister, to say that the government 'cannot legally intervene' in the strike, because the council is being overseen by commissioners after it in effect declared bankruptcy. No wonder Conservative MPs are accusing the government of 'washing its hands' of the dispute. Rayner could be the fulcrum around which the fate of the Labour government turns. The bin strike in Birmingham is the most visible of her challenges, but local government around the country is under financial strain. If Labour does badly in the local elections next month – and I hear squeaks of panic behind closed Labour doors – she might be allocated some of the blame. One saving grace may be that there are no elections in Birmingham this year, but that may not save the city from dragging Labour down elsewhere. She is also responsible for an employment rights bill that could cost jobs, and an ambitious house-building target that seems to be a long way off track to being met. But the urgent priority is to get the refuse collectors back to work in Birmingham. If she cannot do that, the echoes of the Seventies will only grow louder. Julian Lewis, the Tory MP for New Forest East, which is some distance from Birmingham, warned McMahon – who wasn't born at the time of the Winter of Discontent – in the Commons on Monday: 'The Callaghan government and the Labour Party never shook off the pungent smell of the rubbish piling in the streets on their watch, and he really doesn't want to have the same thing happen to him.'
