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
Margaret Thatcher "Falklands factor", an economic recovery beginning early in 1982, and a bitterly divided opposition all contributed to Thatcher's second election victory in 1983. Thatcher frequently referred after the war to the "Falklands spirit"; journalists Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins suggested in 1983 that this reflected her preference for the streamlined decision-making of her War Cabinet over the painstaking deal-making of peacetime cabinet government. In September 1982 she visited China to discuss with Deng Xiaoping the sovereignty of Hong Kong after 1997. China was the first communist state Thatcher had visited and she was the first British prime minister to visit