It was all a bit too frank. Margaret Thatcher, whose approach to German unification has been circumspect at its warmest, at first tried to control the damage; the chain-smoking Old Etonian is a longtime political soul mate. The P.M. insisted she did not share Ridley’s views, then told her private secretary to draft Ridley’s formal and total retraction. Even London’s tabloids were putting a straight face on the affair, with headlines calling for Ridley’s ouster. (The exception was the Daily Star: UP YOURS, HELMUT said the sympathetic bold type on page one.)
But the cost to Thatcher mounted, and Ridley had to resign. Insiders wondered how the secretary for trade could possibly go to Dusseldorf and talk seriously with the Germans after this. Outsiders wondered what had moved him to comment so openly in the first place. “Either he was drunk when he gave this interview,” said Germany’s Free Democratic Party leader Otto Lambsdorff, “or he has not been able to get over England’s defeat by the Germans in the World Cup.”
Not drunk, said Spectator editor Dominic Lawson, 33, whose father, Nigel, quit Thatcher’s cabinet last year. During the tape-recorded interview young Lawson conducted at Ridley’s home July 1, Ridley had “only the smallest glass of wine.” The truth was Ridley was simply being Ridley. As Environment secretary (1986-89), he once labeled the Green Party “pseudo-Marxists.” As Transport secretary (1983-86), he showed up at a motor show driving a French-made car. Contacted in Hungary, where he was traveling when The Spectator hit the newsstands, Ridley said, “This time I’ve really gone and done it.” And that undid him.
