Editing Michael Heseltine (section)

===1975 leadership election===
Heseltine had lost faith in Heath over the second miners' strike and over Heath's personal abrasiveness (Heath had apparently once told him to his face that he was too openly ambitious); his patron [[Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester|Peter Walker]] had also come to have similar doubts about Heath. Ten days before the [[October 1974 United Kingdom general election|October 1974 election]], at which Heseltine bucked the national swing by increasing his majority at Henley, he urged Heath to consider his position by the end of the year.<ref name=crick179-180>Crick 1997, pp. 179–80.</ref>

It is unclear how Heseltine voted in the first ballot of the [[1975 Conservative Party leadership election|1975 Conservative leadership election]], in which the challenger [[Margaret Thatcher]] defeated Heath. [[Norman Tebbit]] stated that he and [[John Nott]] persuaded him to vote for Thatcher so as to open up the way for his preferred candidate [[Willie Whitelaw]] to stand on the second ballot. Another (anonymous) close friend later told [[Michael Crick]] that Heseltine voted for Thatcher. The Thatcher team had him down as an abstainer, while he refused at the time to reveal how he voted.<ref name=crick179-180/> In his memoirs Heseltine wrote that he abstained in the first ballot, but that he would have voted for Whitelaw in the first ballot had he stood against Heath.<ref>Michael Heseltine, ''Life in the Jungle'', Hodder & Stoughton, 2000, {{ISBN|0-340-73915-0}}, p. 61.</ref> Whitelaw admired his drive and energy but looked down on him as "new Money" and is said to have commented that Heseltine was "the sort of man who combs his hair in public".<ref name=crick182-183>Crick 1997, pp. 182–3.</ref>

Heseltine toyed with standing himself for the second ballot (in Crick's view his vote would very likely have been derisory), but voted for Whitelaw. Thatcher, whom Heseltine like many others had initially regarded as something of a joke candidate, defeated Whitelaw and became party leader.<ref name=crick179-180/>