Thatcher’s shadow falls over British politics

Two people are running to be the next Prime Minister of Britainbut a third presence looms over the contest: Margaret Thatcher.

The late former prime minister led Britain in the 1980s and has left a large and contested legacy. Critics see her as an uncompromising ideologue whose free-market policies frayed social ties and destroyed the country’s industrial communities. But for the ruling Conservative Party, Thatcher is an icon, an inspiration and the guiding spirit that made Britain fit for the modern age.

In the race to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and prime minister, both Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak claim to embody the values ​​of Thatcher, who died in 2013 aged 87.

When asked who has been Britain’s best prime minister, both candidates unhesitatingly say Thatcher. Sunak delivered a key speech in Grantham, the late leader’s hometown, declaring himself a supporter of “common sense Thatcherism” as his wife and children took photos in front of the bronze statue of the “Iron Lady”. ”.

Truss speaks of her own modest origins, inviting comparisons to Thatcher, a grocer’s daughter, and strikes poses and outfits (daring blue dresses, bow-necked blouses) that echo the distinctive style of the first woman who was first. Minister of Great Britain.

Historian Richard Vinen of King’s College London calls Truss an “Instagram Thatcher”.

Victoria Honeyman, an associate professor of British politics at the University of Leeds, says Thatcher is “a talisman” for Conservatives. Robert Saunders, a historian at Queen Mary University of London, believes that she “has become a mythical creature”.

“Like Thor’s hammer, Thatcher’s purse can bestow godlike powers on those deemed worthy to pick it up,” Saunders wrote on the Unherd website.

In a sense, the Thatcher fixation is easily explained. She led the Conservatives to three successive electoral victories and was never defeated at the polls. Eventually, she was ousted, like Johnson, by her own party, ousted from her in 1990 after 11 years in power.

Thatcher’s decade in power, through war and peace, boom and bust, also offers rich options for acolytes to choose from. She was a wartime leader with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, a democrat who stood up to the Soviet Union and saw the end of the Cold War, a capitalist who railed against unions and unleashed the power of financial markets.

Thatcher’s economic legacy is also in question. Truss and Sunak claim she is offering Thatcherite economics, but her policies are very different. Truss says she will immediately increase borrowing and cut taxes to ease Britain’s cost-of-living crisis, while Sunak says it is vital to first get the country’s rising rate of inflation under control.

The new British leader will be chosen by some 180,000 members of the Conservative Party, many of whom consider Thatcher a hero. Millions of other British voters remember her differently.

Thatcher privatized state industries, sold off public housing and defeated Britain’s coal miners after a bitter year-long strike. Under her leadership, industries closed and millions of people were thrown out of work, especially in the north of England.

Those memories are not as vivid for Truss, 47, who was a teenager when Thatcher left office. Sunak, now 42, was just 10 years old in 1990.

But 84-year-old Conservative veteran Norman Fowler, who served in the Thatcher government and later served as Speaker of the House of Lords, warned candidates not to “go overboard” with “Iron Lady” worship. .

“I was in his cabinet, in the shadows and in reality, for 15 years,” Fowler told Times Radio. “Even I wouldn’t say that she was perfect in every way. And therefore the match need not be completely modeled on it. So she would give him a break.”