Love or hate her, the much-disputed spirit of Margaret Thatcher continues to march through UK politics
Alongside the likes of Winston Churchill and Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher
remains one of the most memorable British leaders of her century.
Sky News commentator @adamboultonTABB [http://twitter.com/@adamboultonTABB]
Sunday 9 February 2025 00:45, UK
Margaret Thatcher died on 8 April 2013. But the UK’s longest-serving post-war
prime minister still casts a long shadow over politics today, more than a decade
later.
Only last week the Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer cited her example in
support of his deregulation plans. “In the 1980s, the Thatcher
[https://news.sky.com/topic/margaret-thatcher-6016] government deregulated
finance capital…,” he wrote in The Times, “This is our equivalent.”
No British woman leader other than Elizabeth I has been the subject of so many
plays and films, or impersonated by so many actors.
The Iron Lady has been played by Meryl Streep, Gillian Anderson, Lindsay Duncan
and Andrea Riseborough, among others.
Harriet Walter takes the lead in the latest Channel 4 drama Brian and Maggie,
which recreates a TV interview in which the real Thatcher confirmed to
journalist Brian Walden that she did not believe in “equality”.
A year of anniversaries
This is a big year for admirers – and detractors – of Thatcher.
Conservatives pledge to tighten immigration rules in Reform fightback
Reform UK tops landmark poll for first time
Nigel Farage compares Reform polling with Donald Trump election victory
This October marks 100 years since her birth in Grantham, Lincolnshire, the
daughter of a grocer.
The Westminster thinktank Policy Exchange is launching The Thatcher Centenary
Project. This week it held its inaugural meeting marking an equally important
Thatcher anniversary: 50 years since she became the leader of the Conservative
Party [https://news.sky.com/topic/conservatives-5699].
On 5 February 1979, Thatcher scored a surprise victory over the incumbent Ted
Heath in the first round of the Conservative leadership election, winning the
votes of 130 MPs to Heath’s 119.
Sir Hugh Fraser MP, husband of the glamorous author Lady Antonia Fraser, also
ran, garnering 16 votes.
Heath was out. He had been elected prime minister in 1970 and took the UK into
the European Community, but after an economically damaging period of
confrontation with trade unions, he was defeated in two general elections in
1974.
In the second round on 11 February 1975, she was elected leader of the
opposition by a majority knock-out, 146 votes to 79 for Willie Whitelaw, 19 each
for Jim Prior and Geoffrey Howe, and 11 for John Peyton.
She became the first female leader of a major British political party.
Four years later she beat Labour’s Jim Callaghan in the general election to
become Britain’s first woman prime minister.
She would go on to win two further elections, and be prime minister for 11
years, until she was forced out by her party in the autumn of 1990 – a fate she
put down to “treachery”.
‘We need impact’
That was more than 30 years ago and does not explain why she is still such a
potent icon today, both hated and revered.
The explanation lies partly in the way in which her policies transformed
Britain, partly in her political success and partly in the force of her
character.
As she wrote in a letter to her daughter Carol: “Brain power is not enough. We
need personality and impact as well.”
I started to cover British politics from about 1983 and interviewed Mrs Thatcher
quite often.
She was great to talk to because she engaged, even with a young reporter, and
seemed to enjoy being challenged while arguing her position with conviction.
In her later years in Downing Street, she lost this openness and ability to
respond to those who disagreed with her.
Months before her downfall, I remember the cabinet minister Chris Patten
complaining: “She’ll have to go. She’s stopped listening.”
In foreign affairs, her years in power included a military victory to retake the
Falkland Islands, a genuinely special relationship with US president Ronald
Reagan, detente with Mikhail Gorbachev as the Soviet Union imploded and an
increasingly sceptical approach to membership of what became the European Union.
At home, Sir Keir is still praising her for the “meaningful change” she made to
Britain/he and Rachel Reeves are trying on her clothes as they try to emulate
her efforts to “drag Britain out of its stupor by letting loose our natural
entrepreneurialism”.
This prime minister is now looking to the private sector to provide homes and
build infrastructure.
The milk snatcher
Thatcher’s former speechwriter John O’Sullivan views her election as Tory leader
as “the first big victory for radical Conservatism”.
She set about selling off council houses to create a “property-owning democracy”
and began privatisation of many nationalised industries.
There was a widescale deindustrialisation of Britain’s traditional heavy
industries and simultaneous deregulation which led to a boom in the services and
financial sector.
She confronted trade union power and defeated the National Union of Mineworkers’
strike.
Unsurprisingly, she became a hate figure to many on the centre and left of
British politics.
At my children’s primary school in the 1980s and ’90s there was a playground
rhyme about “Margaret Thatcher milk snatcher”, a reference to the cancellation
of free milk for school children during her time as Heath’s education secretary.
There is a song “Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher/ We all celebrate today /’Cause
it’s one day closer to your death” in 2005’s Billy Liar The Musical.
The audience voted to keep it in when she died in 2013.
Disciples of the Iron Lady
Thatcher’s legacy has been complicated for Conservative politicians.
They continue to argue over whether Thatcher in her prime would have been a
leave or remain voter in the 2016 referendum.
Read more:
Obituary of the Iron Lady
[https://news.sky.com/story/margaret-thatcher-obituary-of-iron-lady-10449374]
Thatcher refused to share flight with panda
[https://news.sky.com/story/thatcher-refused-to-share-concorde-flight-with-london-zoo-panda-archives-reveal-11187898]
Thirty years on from Thatcher’s No10 exit
[https://news.sky.com/story/margaret-thatcher-thirty-years-on-from-her-downing-street-exit-her-legacy-lives-on-12144191]
She campaigned to join the EEC, enjoyed sparring with Brussels as prime
minister, but became a bitter critic in her post-Downing Street decline.
Her immediate successor, John Major, built on Thatcherite policies but was
heavily critical of her behaviour as a self-declared “back seat driver”.
Tory leaders since Major have all claimed to be her disciples.
From cold to warm in Labour land
On the Labour side, attitudes have generally warmed up over the years.
Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader who was beaten by Thatcher in 1992 and 1997,
insists that the only thing he admires about her is her success as a woman. John
Smith challenged her economic approach.
Tony Blair invited her for a private discussion in Number 10 soon after his
general election victory and continued to treat her with wary respect.
Gordon Brown went further. He welcomed the then 81-year-old to tea in Downing
Street and told journalists: “I admire Lady Thatcher… I am a conviction
politician like her.”
On her death, Ed Miliband paid tribute to a woman who “broke the mould”.
Jeremy Corbyn, the left-winger who led Labour between 2015 and 2020, was the
exception.
He stuck by the barbs he had aimed at prime minister Thatcher when he was a
backbench Labour MP: “Every week, I speak to renters threatened with eviction.
Homeless people struggling to survive. Parents using food banks. Elderly people
who can’t afford heating. That is the legacy of Thatcherism. We will never
achieve meaningful change until it ends for good.”
Follow our channel and never miss an update
Today Sir Keir is happy to strike Thatcherite poses.
Ironically, while some Conservatives are celebrating Thatcher this year, other
Tories want to move on.
Kwasi Kwarteng, who served briefly as Liz Truss’s “kamikaze” chancellor, chose
this anniversary year to warn “modern politicians” that “they should not indulge
in a grotesque cosplay of an idealised Thatcher who only ever existed in their
imagination”.
The debate is as lively as ever about Thatcher and her legacy.
She is not forgotten – whether people actually knew her when she was alive or
not.
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free
One thing everyone agrees on is that she always enjoyed a good argument, until
her declining years.
With Churchill and Blair she is one of the most memorable British prime
ministers of her century and her much-disputed political soul goes marching on
into the next one.
