Margaret Thatcher 'would not have voted for Brexit' says former aide

Margaret Thatcher would have voted to remain within the EU, according to her former private secretary.

Caroline Slocock, who worked for Thatcher during her final 18 months as PM, said “my view is that she wouldn’t” have voted for Brexit.

Speaking in a Telegraph podcast, she added that, had Thatcher been in charge, “I think it would not have got into this mess in the first place.

“She had form and the form was to stay in and fight. I think David Cameron walked away far too early from those discussions with the EU and she’d have done a much better job and we probably wouldn’t have had a referendum at all.”

Slocock has written about their relationship in her memoir, People Like Us: Margaret Thatcher and Me, released last month.

Thatcher’s famous “no, no, no'” speech, in which she rejected calls for greater central control in Europe, was “the beginning of the troubles that we’re now in,” Slocock said. “It was the moment when the Conservative party split apart and they literally stabbed her in the back. I think that moment was very important for where we are now.”

She added: “She valued immensely the trading relationship that we have with the EU. She regarded the single market as her single greatest achievement in Europe, she’d just be nonplussed, to be finding us walking away from trading relationships.”

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Slocock said she was surprised to like the Tory leader, whose politics didn’t mirror her own.

Speaking to The Times she added that Thatcher preferred male company – and was well aware of her own attributes.

“She had good legs, good wrists, excellent skin, and she was very feminine,” Slocock said. “She used those feminine wiles, if you like, with men all the time.

“But underneath it all she felt quite vulnerable, and I could see that vulnerability. She was very nervous about her speeches and took tremendous trouble trying to get the words out and worrying about whether she could be heard properly.”