MANAGE CABINET

“He said he was completely unaware of homosexuality until well into adult life. This is a man who served in the navy. He's actually only found out about it when he became an MP. And he was amazed when some of his aids said to him, some of your MPs are gay. He was like, what? I don't believe that.”

“He says, and I quote, for too long, we've been living on borrowed time. For too long, this country, all of us, yes, this conference too, has been ready to settle for borrowing money abroad to maintain our standards of life instead of grappling with the fundamental problem of British industry. And then he goes on to say, the cozy world of the postwar consensus has gone. We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase unemployment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candor that that option no longer exists.”

“There's a little twist to the story. It actually turned out that because the Treasury had got their figures wrong, Britain was borrowing less money than everybody thought. So Healey only needed half of the loan and was able to repay it early. Now, of course, people don't know that initially. And at the time, people saw this as the whole business was seen as an abject national humiliation.”

“The Sex Pistols seem perfectly cast to capture the mood in 1976. So Tony Parsons in the NME in early October says they're the quintessential product of The United Kingdom in the nineteen seventies. The music they play reflects their times, no more, no less. And then they get their first appearance a week later in the national newspapers in The Sun.”

“A country like Britain, formerly the world's banker, should not be going to the IMF begging for cash. Now a problem is the key contributors to the IMF are the Americans. And politics in America at this point is well to the right. The Americans will undoubtedly ask for very stringent terms, probably cuts. They'll say you can have the money, but you have to sort your economy out. And for a Labour prime minister, this is obviously a nightmare.”

“So I would say that if you look back at the previous twenty years, only the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had matched that level of fame or notoriety. And here's the funny thing. At this point, the Sex Pistols had not released a single record.”

“So Healy gets in the car from the Treasury to go to Heathrow Airport for his flight to Hong Kong. And during the journey from Central London to Heathrow, the pound falls by another 2¢. By the time he gets to the VIP lounge at Heathrow, he's in a massive dilemma. If he gets on the plane, he'll be out of communication for seventeen hours. So if the power falls more, no one will be able to talk to him or ask his advice.”

“Because when Chairman Mao died, Callaghan refused to have a moment of reflection. Ben was absolutely appalled that Callaghan wouldn't pay tribute to Chairman Mao in, British cabinet. He says, in his diary, Mao merited a moment of reflection. He will undoubtedly be regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest figures of the twentieth century. He certainly towers above any other twentieth century figure I can think of in his philosophical contribution and military genius.”

“And the answer is that he actually handles it brilliantly. It's one of the great examples of prime ministerial management in British history. So what Callaghan does in the next two months, he has 26 cabinet meetings and he basically says to his ministers, fine. You talk this out. You talk yourselves into exhaustion and I'll be the Empire.”