Jeremy Thorpe

Jeremy Thorpe was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, serving after Edward Heath. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)

He was leader of the Liberal Party, which came to power in January 1970 as part of a broad coalition on a platform of social reform, the abolition of the death penalty, and a strong interstellar defence programme. (PROSE: The Devil Goblins from Neptune) Among his ministers was Charles Arbuthnot, a minister with the Ministry of Defence in 1973; (PROSE: Rise of the Dominator) and Kofi Bambera, the Defence Secretary near the end of Thorpe's government. (PROSE: Birds of Passage)

In 1973, during the Mars Probe 7 crisis, Arbuthnot publicly criticised Thorpe and the party for failing at handling crime, and went on to challenge him for party leadership. Arbuthnot was secretly working with the Dominator Vaar and ageing Nazi sympathisers. Thorpe was debating Arbuthnot in the meeting when, to Thorpe's pleasure, the man was exposed by a time-travelling William Bishop and Anne Travers. (PROSE: Rise of the Dominator)

Despite the Third Doctor's objections, Jeremy kept the Damascus project running. On one occasion when the Doctor and UNIT seemed reluctant to take action against an alien spaceship sighted near East Anglia, Jeremy went to UNIT HQ to persuade the Doctor personally. The Doctor initially rebuffed him, explaining that the aliens were the Milieu which were usually peaceful merchants, but changed his mind when a listlessness field began affecting the country. Jeremy rang his usual numbers for a crisis, but only received a response from the Damascus project where a woman, Lila, told him this should teach him about taking things that weren’t his. He accompanied the Doctor to East Anglia in Bessie and they confronted the Milieu, who took them aboard their ship and revealed they were not behind the field but had been pursuing Lila, who had made one. The Doctor convinced them to leave by threatening to strengthen the field to affect them, with Jeremy horrified by his manner. Returned to Earth, Jeremy confessed to the Doctor that he had spoken to the woman who was behind the field and that the Damascus project was still operating. The Doctor was furious and abandoned him. (AUDIO: Damascus) That evening Jeremy made a broadcast from Norwich to reassure the nation. (AUDIO: The World Beyond The Trees) After the incident, Jeremy decided that the Doctor's morality was dangerous and recounted his experience into a tape recorder, ending the recording by saying that the Doctor must be stopped. (AUDIO: Damascus)

His government enacted the Auderly House Accords with China to public acclaim. (PROSE: Birds of Passage)

Jeremy was close to Global Chemicals and personally forbade Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart from investigating the company. (TV: The Green Death)

His government was unstable by 1975, in part due to growing discontent about Hong Konger immigration after the Auderly House Accords. He went to the palace to request an early election. (PROSE: Birds of Passage)

Thorpe was replaced as Prime Minister by Shirley Williams. (PROSE: Interference - Book One)

Behind the scenes

 * The Prime Minister was called "Jeremy" by the Brigadier, referencing Liberal Party leader . During production, there was a close-call general election; the Doctor Who production team, operating on the assumption that the UNIT stories took place in the near future, were joking that Thorpe (whose party was extremely unlikely to win) would be appointed Prime Minister.
 * Thorpe's forename wasn't given in Interference, but the common-sense interpretation of the passage is that the author was referencing Jeremy Thorpe.
 * He was explicitly mentioned in the "Party Politics" section of the BBC's Doctor Who site: "In the aftermath of several invasions of London in the late 60s, the 1970 election produces a hung parliament (conflicting Tory and Socialist policies towards the alien menace drive many voters towards the Liberals and fringe parties). In this atmosphere, a coalition government, led by Jeremy Thorpe, governs Britain in the early 70s." The article posits that continued alien invasions and "the power crisis caused by the collapse of Global Chemicals, the Government's involvement in the Axonite scandal and the Operation Golden Age fiasco, which included high ranking figures in the conspiracy" cause the coalition to collapse in 1973, and was succeeded by the Labour government under Shirley Williams.
 * While the exact year is never given in PROSE: Birds of Passage, "Alistair" is referred to as in command of UNIT; Candy Jar's PROSE: The Enfolded Time has him leaving sometime in 1976. In a press release, Mammone said the book took place in 1975.
 * He was played by Hugh Grant in the miniseries A Very English Scandal.