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
Premiership of Margaret Thatcher her opposition to greater economic integration into the European Community. She also alienated many Conservative voters and Members of Parliament with the imposition of the local poll tax. As her support fell away, she was challenged for the party leadership and persuaded by her Cabinet to withdraw from the second round of voting, ending her eleven-year tenure as Prime Minister. Though she remains a domestically polarising figure, historians and political scientists generally rank Thatcher as an above-average Prime Minister. Biographer John Campbell reports that in July 1978 when asked by a Labour MP in Commons what she meant by socialism: