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Thus total public spending tended to go up instead of down. Just as welfare costs rose, so did government subsidies to public-sector industries. Some of the proposals advanced by Thatcher simply proved unrealistic, like her plan to cut government financing for such ailing nationalized industries as British Steel, British Airways and British Leyland, the automaker. To have allowed the companies to collapse would have meant a million new unemployed, including tens of thousands of jobs in supplier companies. Explained Deputy Prime Minister William Whitelaw: "In the real world, you cannot destroy your steel industry and remain an industrial power of any standing."
Friedman, a research fellow at California's Hoover Institution, refuses to acknowledge that his theories are to blame for Thatcher's troubles. Calling the Prime Minister "a remarkable woman," he says that "unfortunately, actual practice has not conformed to policy." Monetary growth increased rather than declined, he points out. (At 22.5%, it is more than double the target of 7% to 11%.) He criticizes Thatcher's decision to go along with a campaign promise to raise civil service salaries by 28%, so that they would approach salaries in the private sector. Says Friedman: "That shot into a cocked hat the hope of cutting down government spending." He also thinks it was a mistake to decrease upper-bracket income taxes while increasing the value-added tax, which could only add to inflation.
Thatcher admits that things have not gone well and looks to more difficulties ahead. "It will be another hard year," she told a recent Tory conference, "but I believe that if the government sticks—as it will—to its determination to get inflation out of the economy, and if the pay settlements this winter are reasonable, there is real hope that a year from now things will be looking distinctly brighter." Referring to the pressure for a policy U-turn, she says, "This lady's not for turning."
Confrontation, in fact, is her metier, and even the day-to-day combat in the highly charged arena at the House of Commons stimulates her. Recently she confessed: "The adrenaline flows. They really come out fighting at me, and I fight back. I stand there and I know, 'Now come on, Maggie, you are wholly on your own. No one can help you.' And I love it." Virtually every demand of public office seems to agree with her. Thatcher looks, if anything, more youthful than when she moved into Downing Street. There is little relaxation in her regimen. Her staff is awed by her "terrific appetite for work and her energy level." Her voice gets husky after particularly heavy weeks, but she rarely seems tired. Five hours of sleep are enough, she insists. She rises about 6:30 a.m., listens to radio news, prepares breakfast—coffee, toast and fruit —for herself and her husband of 29 years, Denis Thatcher, 65, a semiretired business executive. Their 27-year-old twins are off on their own: Carol is a journalist in Australia; Mark, a racing driver whose avocation and political gaffes have sometimes been cause for concern.
On a typical day, Thatcher walks down one flight of stairs to the Prime Minister's study around 9 for early appointments. Twice a week, her hairdresser