Margaret Thatcher senior member of the party and former Minister of Defence, as Foreign Minister in 1979. Although he was considered a "wet", he avoided domestic affairs and got along well with Thatcher. The first issue was what to do with Rhodesia, where the five-percent white population was determined to rule the prosperous, largely-black ex-colony in the face of overwhelming international disapproval. After the collapse of the Portuguese Empire in Africa in 1975, South Africa, which had been Rhodesia's chief supporter, realised that country was a liability. Black rule was inevitable, and Carrington brokered a peaceful solution at the Lancaster House conference
Margaret Thatcher past 70 years. Despite a relatively poor average poll rating as Prime Minister, Thatcher has since ranked highly in retrospective opinion polling and, according to YouGov, she is "see[n] in overall positive terms" by the British public. She was voted the fourth-greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by MORI. According to theatre critic Michael Billington, Thatcher left an "emphatic mark" on the arts while Prime Minister. One of the earliest satires of Thatcher as Prime Minister involved satirist John Wells (as writer and performer), actress Janet Brown (voicing Thatcher) and future