One nation and one Europe… still – Lord Carrington at 95
For Lord Carrington, as for many other Conservative politicians of his generation, the two most formative events were the mass unemployment of the 1930s and the second world war.
The 1930s endowed a generation of Tories with a horror of the effects of unemployment, while the war convinced many of the same generation that a new Europe, based on economic and political integration, was an essential bulwark against future conflict, Tim Bouverie writes.
These views are now wildly out of fashion as, indeed, are the people who hold them.
Margaret Thatcher spectacularly defied the conventional political wisdom of the time, which held that no government could survive unemployment of more than one million – unemployment rose to more than three million under her premiership and she won two more general elections as Tory leader.
“The Lady” or “That woman”, as some of her less admiring colleagues referred to her, also broke the Conservative consensus on Europe. Despite having led the “Yes” campaign in the referendum of 1975, Mrs Thatcher came to see the European community as a bureaucratic affront to national sovereignty.
So, have Lord Carrington’s views changed as austerity gets a stamp of approval from the IMF and Britain seriously considers withdrawing from the European Union?
To a certain extent, yes. But by no means fundamentally.
He thinks that he and his fellow “wets” were perhaps overly scarred by the Jarrow marches of the 1930s and he has become “more agnostic” about the EU.
But, at heart, he still believes in “one nation”, a slogan that has since been appropriated by Labour leader Ed Miliband in what is perhaps an indication of the transformation of both his party and the Conservatives over the last thirty years. Lord Carrington also retains his belief in “one Europe”.
Acknowledging his own privileged background, he believes that it is the duty of government to reduce inequality, while on Europe he thinks, plainly, that it would be a “stupid thing to do” if Britain left.
Given this outlook, it is no surprise that the peacetime prime minister he retains the greatest admiration for is Harold Macmillan rather than Margaret Thatcher.
Tim Bouverie, Channel 4 News Producer @TimPBouverie