Former Conservative minister Norman Fowler disagrees with one current cabinet member’s description of her administration as ‘true cabinet government’
Your report (Tory MPs plot to avert benefit squeeze after humiliating U-turns, 3 October) quotes an unnamed cabinet member as saying: “We have not had true cabinet government since the days of Margaret Thatcher.” Really?
Does this minister not remember the Westland affair, which led to the resignation of two of the strongest members of Mrs Thatcher’s cabinet, Michael Heseltine and Leon Brittan? At the very heart of this dispute was the refusal of the prime minister to allow a discussion in full cabinet of the issues involved.
