Tarzan turns 90

The mane of flowing blond hair might have gone – it’s snowy white these days. In most other respects, the years have been kind to Michael Heseltine.

He turns 90 on 21st March, but he’s in pretty good shape physically and, marbles-wise, is still firing on all cylinders.

His dashing good looks and actionman style led to his being dubbed Tarzan in his political heyday. These days, he is more likely to be found tending to the trees and shrubs in the gardens at his home at Thenford, Northamptonshire, than dashing around Parliament.

But he’s still a deeply political animal. What does he think of the trio of Prime Ministers who’ve occupied 10 Downing Street over the last year?

‘I have a good personal relationship with Boris – who succeeded me as MP at Henley – though I’m deeply critical of his policies, and his political integrity is not one I can admire,’ says Heseltine.

He gives short shrift to Liz Truss, whose premiership he describes as ‘an aberration’. But he appears to admire Rishi Sunak. He says Sunak ‘brought sanity back to British politics’, though he laments the fact that Sunak’s a Brexiteer.

He’s also quick to dismiss Labour leader Keir Starmer’s plans for House of Lords reform. ‘He would be mad to do that – if he were to win the election, the last thing he’d want is a prolonged constitutional row that would actually achieve none of the benefits proposed,’ he says. ‘That said, it’s too big and should have only around 600 members – I’d offer an inducement of some sort, for some peers to go.’

He was born in Swansea in 1933 to parents of mixed English and Welsh heritage – though he points out he’s ‘actually a quarter French because’ his father’s mother ‘was 100-per-cent French’. Heseltine first stood for Parliament in 1959. His political hero, Harold Macmillan, was Prime Minister.

After being elected to the Commons at his third attempt – for Tavistock in 1966 (though he was MP for Henley from 1974 to 2001) – he went on to have a 30-plusyear career in front-line politics.

He served as Secretary of State for Defence, the Environment, and Trade and Industry before becoming Deputy Prime Minister. According to legend, he plotted his future on the back of an envelope while a student at Oxford – a future that would culminate in his becoming prime minister. But he never did get the keys to Number 10.

His three decades at the top were not without incident. In 1976, he picked up the mace during a stormy political debate in the House of Commons and resigned over the Westland affair in 1986. Famously, he was once described by the Tory MP and diarist Alan Clark as the sort of person who ‘buys his own furniture’.

He also pushed through landmark legislation such as the Right to Buy policy in the early 1980s, enabling more than two million tenants to buy their council homes.

His two proudest political achievements? The ‘urban regeneration’ he inaugurated in Liverpool (after the 1981 Toxteth riots) with projects such as the International Garden Festival in 1984 – which later resulted in his being granted the Freedom of the City of Liverpool.

‘As Minister of Merseyside, I was arguably the most interventionist of any minister in modern British political history,’ he says.

Secondly, he is proud of his pivotal role in setting up the European Space Agency in 1973 during Edward Heath’s premiership, ‘in which Britain achieved a significant leadership in satellite technology’.

Contrary to received wisdom, he insists he had ‘a good working relationship’ with Margaret Thatcher for much of her premiership.

‘We were never friends, but that’s quite irrelevant – we were colleagues, and she kept promoting and supporting me,’ but they ultimately fell out ‘over the European issue in the mid-eighties’.

In 1990, after Geoffrey Howe resigned as Deputy Prime Minister, he challenged her for the leadership. It’s said that he who wields the sword never wears the crown. And so it proved in Hezza’s case, with the premiership passing to John Major.

Heseltine has no regrets about his leadership challenge. ‘There were clear signs the party wanted change, and the poll tax would have taken the party down and ended Mrs Thatcher’s premiership if she’d still been leader in 1992.’

He regrets never making it to 10 Downing Street. ‘Of course I’d like to have become Prime Minister – and if I had been leader, the party would never have supported Brexit.’

Despite having ‘a minor heart attack’ in 1993, he did get to become Deputy Prime Minister – the second-most powerful position in the land – in 1995.

Then, four years after Labour’s landslide 1997 election victory, he resigned his Henley seat.

Since then, Heseltine has had more time to devote to the magnificent arboretum and gardens he’s created –with the help of a team of gardeners – in the 70 acres of land surrounding his 18th-century mansion.

It boasts ‘a collection of more than 3,000 different types of tree and shrub’, as well as extensive herbaceous borders, a sculpture garden and a rill.

Converting the grounds from ‘an overgrown jungle of weeds’ over the last

40-odd years has been ‘a labour of love’, admits Heseltine, who zips around the gardens every day on a golf buggy.

The ‘therapeutic effects of the greenery’ have brought him and his wife Anne enormous enjoyment – an experience now shared by visitors to the gardens on open days.

There is one last political battle the warrior-like elder statesman is determined to keep waging until his dying breath: reversing Brexit, which he argues has been ‘every bit as bad’ as predicted, inflicting huge damage on the country.

‘Brexiteers claim Brexit hasn’t been done properly, but they’ve had their fingers on the levers of power for six years. So what the heck have they been doing all that time?’

He admits it would be ‘presumptuous’ to think Brexit might be reversed in his lifetime, but he’s convinced that in the longer term Britain will ‘see sense’.

‘The younger generation won’t tolerate the marginalisation of this country,’ he adds.

So will Heseltine be urging people to vote for the Liberal Democrats in the next general election, as he did in the 2019 European elections, an act that led to his having the Tory whip suspended?

‘I’ve never been a Lib Dem – and I can’t remember how I voted in the European elections,’ he says. ‘But the idea that I’m now unaligned [as his Wikipedia entry says] is ridiculous.

‘I’m still a [Tory] party member, and there can’t be a Conservative who’s been at the forefront of more battles than me.’

He admits he’ll have ‘a real dilemma’ when Sunak calls an election.

‘I want the government to pursue a much more British policy of self-interest in Europe, and I’m not getting that from this Conservative government.’

Heseltine attributes his longevity to ‘having a wonderful family’ with his wife and three children. He’s still involved in the Haymarket publishing empire he founded, though son Rupert is now Executive Chairman.

That longevity is helped, he says, by his ‘being a gardener’. And he was much looking forward to his 90th-birthday party when we spoke.

Does he think he’ll still be around in ten years’ time to get a letter from King Charles congratulating him on reaching his century?

‘That’s the plan,’ he chuckles.

For open days at Thenford Arboretum, go to thenfordarboretum.com