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Keith - I won't deny John Major made initial steps to start the Northern Ireland peace process and he should be given credit for that but, because of the Tories' links with the Unionists, his Government had not officially met Sinn Fein, which was the key to the whole thing.

Tony Blair did an awful lot more that just finish off something John Major started.

As for Maggie, if she had gone in more than once, I would agree with your concern. She only went in that one time, to brief Tony on the security issues that only Prime Ministers know. There wasn't anyone else.

Think on this though - Tony Blair and New Labour had just inflicted the biggest defeat of the Tories since at least 1945. How happy do you think Maggie was to go to No 10 that day......

[quote]'For it seemed to me that much more truth could be found in reasonings which a man makes concerning matters that concern him than in those which some scholar makes in his study about speculative matters. For the consequences of the former will soon punish the man if he judges wrongly, whereas the latter have no practical consequences and no importance for the scholar except that perhaps the further they are from common sense the more pride will he take in them, since he will have had to use much more skill and ingenuity in trying to render them plausible.'

Ren? Descartes[/quote]

Basically the 3rd world immigrants and the unemployed of Europe tell us the truth. The UK's the place to be.

Keith - on the Maggie thing, that was the answer. Think on this - for every other change of PM since 1951, there has always been an ex-PM of the same party with recent experience that the new PM could find out about these security things from. In Tony's case, it wouldn't have been worth calling in Jim Callaghan as his experience would probably have been out of date (even though it is well known that Tony had lots of conversations with Jim).

Re your point about a Senior Civil Servant could have briefed him, well, I'm sure they probably advised him to call Maggie in.

Re 1974, I vaguely remember this as an interested 11 year old and I've just looked it up to get the details. Feb 28 election Lab 301, Tory 297, Lib 14, SNP/Welsh Nats\ NI Unionists\others 24 - numer needed for an overall majority, 318. The next day, Heath (as sitting PM) went to the Palace, did not resign but intead reported to the Queen and, after this, approached the Liberals to try and form a coalition government.

The Liberals, under Jeremy Thorpe, thought about it but said no. Heath then resigned as PM and the Queen called Harold Wilson in and invited him to form a Government. He accepted, the Labour Government was a minority one (so was always dependent on other parties supporting it) and, as I'm sure you know, Wilson called another Election in October where Labour did win with a small overall majority.

Warren
Are you an MP or summit?