Shadow Cabinet of Margaret Thatcher Cabinet ceased to exist upon her becoming Prime Minister following the 1979 general election. Thatcher announced her first Shadow Cabinet on 18 February 1975. On 15 January 1976, Thatcher reshuffled the Shadow Cabinet. Pym returned as Shadow Agriculture Minister, displacing Jopling. George Younger was dropped from the front bench, and he was replaced by Gilmour at Defence; Whitelaw, the Deputy Leader, added Gilmour's Home Affairs portfolio to his Devolution. John Biffen replaced Jenkin as Shadow Energy Secretary, and Jenkin took Health from Fowler, who was demoted to be a Shadow Transport Minister (which was not in Shadow Cabinet and was
Historical rankings of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom using a 0 to 10 scale, where 0 meant highly unsuccessful and 10 meant highly successful. Overall, MPs rated Margaret Thatcher as the most successful post-war Prime Minister, just ahead of Clement Attlee. With the exception of Edward Heath, who was judged more favourably by Labour MPs than by Conservatives, evaluations were split along party lines: Tory MPs tended to consider Conservative prime ministers to be more successful than did Labour MPs, and Labour MPs generally gave Labour prime ministers higher scores than did Conservative MPs. In October 2016 the University of Leeds, in conjunction with Woodnewton Associates, surveyed 82