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Archive (Hoskyns MSS)

Economy: Hoskyns diary (lunch with the Thatchers) ["she needed a boost to her morale"]

Document type: Declassified documents
Source: Hoskyns MSS (privately held)
Editorial comments: Reproduced from John Hoskyns Just in Time (2000), p287
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 142
Themes: Economic policy - theory and process, Monetary policy, Public spending & borrowing, Taxation

Friday 13 March 1981

Ronnie Millar in at about 11.30 and we chatted about the Budget. Lunch with Margaret and Denis and Ian Gow in the flat. Afterwards Ronnie said he thought MT was pinched, thinner in the face and had obviously been under a lot of strain. She needed a boost to her morale (though she had seemed, outwardly, to be roaring like a lion, eg on her ad lib speech to businessmen at Mansion House). So we complimented her on that speech and said we felt the Budget was turning out well and the press were beginning to realise it. Also apparently Geoffrey H had been superb in Robin Day's programme, demolishing poor Stan Orme who'd been saying that we should let the PSBR rise as high as it wanted to go and at the same time cut interest rates.