On the 100th birthday of Margaret Thatcher, Alys Denby reflects on what lessons she’s learned from the Iron Lady, and why her legacy remains relevant today…
My mother tells me that when I was about three, I asked her if a woman could be a doctor. She replied: “darling, a woman is Prime Minister!”. It can’t have been long after that she was ousted and replaced by John Major, whose impression barely troubled my early years. So it was Tony Blair who controlled the political events of my adolescence, but it is Margaret Thatcher who has always dominated my political imagination. And my enduring love of a pussy bow blouse.
This makes me unusual in many circles, but not among Conservatives. Indeed there was an exhibition of her clothes at this year’s party conference – preserved behind glass like the corpse of Lenin. But her (excellent) fashion sense is not the only way her ghostly presence haunts the party.
She left office 35 years ago, and would have been 100 years old today. Yet no Tory can ever stop talking about her.
Why? I believe it is because she gave Conservatives moral and intellectual clarity which we have since struggled to regain. It is scarcely possible to imagine a politician today telling a journalist, as she did once that she was: “in politics because of the conflict between good and evil and out of the conviction that in the end good will triumph”. She was no Liz Truss-style free market ideologue – her economics was underpinned by her strong Christian faith and undying conviction in the greatness of Britain and the evil of socialism. She gave Conservatives something to believe in.
The sick man of Europe
She also got results. When she took office in 1979, Britain was the sick man of Europe. Such was the reach of the state that we even had a nationalised sugar company. Her free market reforms – privatising swathes of industry, curbing union power and championing enterprise – not only turned the economy around, but reshaped the national psyche. Disney’s adaptation of the late Jilly Cooper’s Rivals is a glorious celebration of the brash, confident and individualistic culture she inspired.
Today we face problems similar to those she wrestled with. Decades of near stagnant growth have left Britain in the palpable grip of decline. People aren’t just materially poorer, shuttered shops, graffiti daubed tube trains and public services that don’t work make us feel worse off too. Abroad we face enemies no less hostile to our democratic way of life than the Soviet Union. And in the BMA, we have a militant trade union holding the nation to ransom as it pursues its own political agenda. These doctors are no better than Arthur Scargill just because they wear white coats.
Thatcher would have been appalled by the idea of a Tory/Reform pact
These challenges demand real conservative solutions, but the party Thatcher led is now under existential threat. With Reform surging in the polls, many are urging the Tories to make a pact with Farage and “unite the right”. I think Thatcher would have been appalled by the idea. Not just because she was a Conservative to her core, but because she would have distrusted the intellectual slipperiness of Farage’s agenda. For her, leadership meant conviction within the framework of responsible government — not a populist revolt from the sidelines. She would have urged today’s Conservatives to stop looking for salvation in alliances or slogans and instead rediscover their moral purpose: to defend freedom, reward hard work, and restore national confidence.
Margaret Thatcher’s 100th birthday is as good an opportunity to remember that what Britain, and the Conservative Party need, is resolve.
Alys Denby is opinion and features editor of City AM