Portillo on Thatcher: The Lady’s Not for Spurning

Or how we all learned to love Portillo. Gradually he’s become the Brian Walden of his day. Shining on the Moral Maze, on the underrated This Week and making documentaries on seemingly anything he fancies. He was also the best thing in last years celebrity trial drama-doc; The Verdict keeping Archer in check.

And finally he gets a 90 minutes thesis on what might have been. If only, as he reveals, he’d held his nerve when Major resigned in 1995 or if he’d not lost by one vote in 2001. (Was Duncan Smith really Thatcher’s fault?) then he would have had his stab at being Cameron, who he clearly admires. He gets the best out of a fantastic cast; Hague, Lamont, Clarke, and an incredibly uncomfortable Michael Howard who refreshingly reveals that perhaps he didn’t have it in him to slay Thatcher’s ghost. And David Mellor is spectacularly rude. To everyone.

Worth it just for the anecdote about a cheap scottish hotel, the home secretary and the bastards.