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The modern Conservative Party is never happier than when Labour has a unilateral disarmour as its leader.

In 1986, Margaret Thatcher arrived at her party's annual conference in

Bournemouth with a spring in her step, despite having endured months of bruising political infighting

in the aftermath of the Westland affair. She promptly fell over a manhole cover and sprained her ankle,

but even this did little to dampen her spirits.

The reason for her good mood was that over the previous two weeks, both the Liberal and Labour Party

conferences had voted in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament. In the case of the Liberals,

this merely confirmed Thatcher's view that they were not to be taken seriously,

particularly as the vote set the members at odds with the leadership of the alliance

and represented a direct rebuke of David Owen's much more hawkish SDP.

Labor was different.

The Labour Party will never die was one of Thatcher's mantras.

What Labour did mattered because it was the only alternative party of government.

And in this case, the party members were in tune with the leadership.

Neil Kinnock, who had spent the past few years painstakingly trying to distance himself

from the militant elements of his movement,

was nonetheless unwilling or unable to give up his personal commitment to unilateralism.

He later said that even if he had wanted to, his wife, Glenys, wouldn't have allowed it.

The party might have survived, but his marriage wouldn't have.

Thatcher pounced.

She used her conference speech to excoriate Kinnock for his pusillanimity.

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