''The modern Conservative Party is never happier than when Labour has a
unilateral disarmer as its leader. In 1986 Margaret Thatcher arrived
at her party’s annual conference in Bournemouth with a spring in her
step, despite having endured months of bruising political infighting
in the aftermath of the Westland affair. She promptly fell over a
manhole cover and sprained her ankle but even this did little to
dampen her spirits. The reason for her good mood was that over the
previous two weeks both the Liberal and Labour Party conferences had
voted in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament. In the case of the
Liberals this merely confirmed Thatcher’s view that they were not to
be taken seriously, particularly as the vote set the members at odds
with the leadership of the Alliance and represented a direct rebuke of
David Owen’s much more hawkish SDP. Labour was different. ‘The Labour
Party will never die’ was one of Thatcher’s mantras. What Labour did
mattered because it was the only alternative party of government..''
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