Maggie The Yeti: How Sir Eric Pickles Met PM Thatcher

Conservative MP Sir Eric Pickles yesterday revealed the former Prime Minister grabbed him "like a yeti" when he first met her. 

The Former PM,  often called the "Iron Lady"

Speaking to Sixth Form Students at JFS, based in Kenton, Sir Pickles MP told students that then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher “like a yeti, grabbing you” introduced herself to invite him to apply to stand as a Conservative Parliamentary candidate in the 1992 election. He concluded that "she won me over" and “I owe a lot to Margaret Thatcher.”

But the MP for Brentwood and Ongar explained how he was born into a family of “Labour and Cooperative Party” supporters. He fascinated students with his early love of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, which he read “page to page.”

However he claimed that “I think I’m [now] a Conservative” and that he didn't regret Cameron’s decision to “move [me] on” from his role as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.  Sometimes “you’ve had your chips and got to go,” he said.

And he claimed to be immensely proud of his work as Chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFoI) since early 2015. Pickles, who had the night before addressed CFoI’s Parliamentary reception, referred to Israel as a “bastion of liberty and democracy” and “a good ally to this country.”  He emphasised that “our economy is extremely linked with Israel’s” and impressed students with the statistic that “one out of six prescriptions in the UK” is based on pharmaceutical knowledge from Israel.

Pickles further highlighted his most recent appointment as the  UK’s Special Post Holocaust Envoy. “Views of the Holocaust… is forever faced with contemporary politics,” he said, adding: “there is a surprisingly large amount of Nazi loot floating around Europe now.”  Perhaps the most honest insight to his current role came when he described the use of “democracy, charm and damn-right bloody rudeness at times” to affect change.

He criticised “people who want to rewrite their own history” and “the majority of people who obviously didn’t [do anything].” And when similarly asked his views on the controversy over the Cecil Rhodes statue in Oxford, the Special Envoy said: “No we shouldn’t [pull it down]… you can’t re-write history.” He added: “It’s like ISIS” smashing ancient artefacts in a museum in Mosul.  

And in response to a further student’s testing question, the MP revealed he finds it “Frankly… really difficult to take a relaxed [approach]… to small numbers [being welcomed in UK].” He praised the “major contributions” of “Kinder Transport [children]” and “the people who came from death camps.”

Sir Eric Pickles, the Conservative Friends of Israel Chairman