In his engaging memoir of life in the Number 10 bunker with Margaret Thatcher, Tim Lankester refers to an impromptu visit the prime minister paid to the Department of Employment, as it then was, ‘to see what they are all doing’. Her relations with Jim Prior, then secretary of state, were at rock bottom and she believed that the department was dragging its feet on trade union reform.

One can imagine the alarm as the prime minister fetched up in reception, unannounced. In fact, I can very easily imagine it. When I was working at the Treasury in the early 1980s, she turned up to meet the team, which was signally failing to meet her monetary targets. I was grandly entitled ‘Principal (monetary policy)’. Principal, at the time, was the lowest form of intelligent life in a ministry. She swept in, drenched in Chanel and wielding a large handbag. ‘I want to hear what’s really going on’, she began, and then proceeded to tell us exactly what the problems were and why we were failing. No words from us could be got in, edgeways or otherwise. 

Lankester is ten years older than me, and had already reached the heady height of economic private secretary to the prime minister by the time of Thatcher’s visit. It’s a delicate position, which involves explaining the Treasury to the PM, and the PM’s view to the Treasury. So when