It’s alleged that the Heseltine that we’re told to know and love is not the Heseltine of reality. It’s the comment Lady Thatcher made to me in the years she spent in a political wilderness following her demise from UK political life.
She often spoke of people, and many names came up in our “coffee conversations”, as she called them. She knew about the hatred of public life, and the corruption ripped through every other walk of life. She knew she got labels she didn’t deserve, and many more besides that she didn’t like.
Her memories were apt, and faithfully reported the true drama of the times. Heseltine was someone she always found it unfortunate to remember. She said he was a bad example in private and in public. It’s believed he was a mastermind behind much of the conspiracy that straddled her Premiership. “He’s also disliked anywhere else I go,” she once said, soberly.
His recent comments about Nigel Farage MP (Clacton/Reform UK) are ill-advised. He clearly doesn’t understand the situation on the ground, as it were. He whips up hatred as if he is an Enoch Powell type of figure himself, which is more than likely. There are many secret extremists in Parliament who just plot against us. Farage is the latest target in his book.