(Update, it turns out I was mistaken on the date of Margaret Thatcher’s 100th birthday. It was 13 October, 2025, and not before, as my comments might have implied.)
Mrs Thatcher’s 100th birthday was recently marked, and a few commentators, not all of them friendly, have remarked on her influence and the way that she still casts a shadow over our times.
Adrian Wooldridge at Bloomberg is a columnist I follow. I like and dislike some of his stuff. (His book on Meritocracy and the co-authored one with Alan Greenspan on American capitalism are both excellent, in my view.)
Let’s go:
Far be it from me to spit upon the grave: Thatcher was a great prime minister, up there with William Gladstone and Winston Churchill, and Thatcherism was a necessary response to a set of pressing problems. But a serious politician deserves a serious assessment: We need now to address the fact that the Conservative Party to which she devoted her life lies in ruins, that its sister Republican Party has been hijacked by an authoritarian populist, and that Thatcher herself bears some responsibility for this. Indeed, she was a leading player in the transformation of Anglo-Saxon conservatism into a revolutionary political doctrine that may have destroyed conservativism itself.
The idea that Mrs T’s brand of political views were “revolutionary” only works if you have a particular view of what a revolution means. Mrs Thatcher thought that the post-1945 “settlement” – to give it a term, of high progressive tax, high regulation, nationalised industry, powerful unions, Keynesian demand management, state-run schools, socialised medicine, etc, was in broad terms, a disaster. Also, she took the view that the things that conservatives of the large C and small c variety cared about, such as civil society, property rights, ordered liberty, strong defence, and certain values, were damaged by this post-1945 settlement. Therefore, to conserve, one must also sweep much of this away, or at the very least, reform and constrain it. It is a paradox, but not that hard to grasp really.
There is more:
Tory Brexiteers were the most revolutionary people ever to wear the blue rosette.
Well, leaving a federal union with a demographic deficit with its desire to be a new super-national bloc, is I suppose “revolutionary” in the sense of “revolve” back to where the UK was prior to that development. To plead the case for change necessarily is going to irritate many: not just those of goodwill who thought the EU was marvellous in most respects, but of course to all the lobbyists, special interests etc who were happy to ride on the train. Contesting that makes one come across as abrasive and harsh. Soft voices, and “moderation”, gets one no-where, as several UK prime ministers would find out.
Wooldridge then goes on to claim that Mrs Thatcher’s approach led the way to the kind of populist politics on the Right in the US, first with Reagan (although American conservativism was taking a more vigorous turn back in the 60s under Goldwater) and then in particular with the rise of Trump. But that seems a stretch. Trump, a former registered Democrat, fixed on specific grievances, but it was more than that. He also tried to convey a more hopeful message of return to greatness. But there are many differences too. For all her dislike of the EU, Mrs Thatcher also favoured alliances of nation states, and the importance of close co-operation where necessary. And she could temporise when necessary.
In another line, Wooldridge repeats Mrs Thatcher’s line about “there is no such thing as society” – condemned as much on the socialist left as it is on the paternalist right – and falls into the trap of so many of not seeing the full quote in context. If I had been paid a pound every time I heard that line to denounce Mrs Thatcher, I’d be able to buy a vintage Ferrari. Wooldridge is being lazy.
Here is the quote in full: “There is no such thing as society. [end p30] There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. And the worst things we have in life, in my view, are where children who are a great privilege and a trust—they are the fundamental great trust, but they do not ask to come into the world, we bring them into the world, they are a miracle, there is nothing like the miracle of life—we have these little innocents and the worst crime in life is when those children, who would naturally have the right to look to their parents for help, for comfort, not only just for the food and shelter but for the time, for the understanding, turn round and not only is that help not forthcoming, but they get either neglect or worse than that, cruelty.”
However you want to parse that, this is not someone saying that we can live our lives in self-contained boxes, not interacting or engaging with our fellow humans in all kinds of nourishing and supportive ways. She understood Edmund Burke’s “little platoons”. Alexis de Tocqueville’s insights about the voluntaristic energies of the young American republic also tap into the same point.
The core of all this is for Mrs Thatcher is that, as much as possible, our interactions are voluntary. Even in the case of care for children, that obligation stems from the choice of having a child in the first place.
There is not much else left to discuss in the article, but here is a point where Wooldridge makes what I think is a reasonable point but also over-eggs it:
Both Thatcher and Reagan enjoyed extraordinary success in privatizing industries, deregulating markets and generally unleashing entrepreneurial energies. That encouraged their successors to imitate their radicalism. But they also failed to arrest the shift of the culture to the left or to get a grip on the independent-minded permanent state. That failure provoked a combination of fury at the status quo and calls for further radicalism.
But how can a tamer, more “moderate” or “Burkean” conservatism have worked in this case? Inevitably, and certainly with Mrs Thatcher, there was only so much she could do in her decade in office. On education, for example, it was a topic that fascinated her, but how far can one political leader go in arresting its Leftward tilt? I have read Charles Moore’s three-volume biography of her and it is clear that she minded furiously about all this. (There is a single-volume version to coincided with her 100th birthday.) And I think that whatever solutions might be applied, they must involve removing government as much as possible from education, not the other way around. That is, in current terms, a “revolutionary” position to take.
Caution and moderation are not virtues in and of themselves as it depends what one is moderate and cautious about, and why. Mark Sidwell at CapX has these observations about Mrs Thatcher and her political importance. I like this line: “Thatcher’s politics was all about agency: embracing it, restoring it and trusting it.”
Also, if you can hold of a copy, I recommend Shirley Robin Letwin’s “An Anatomy of Thatcherism”, a sympathetic and closely reasoned analysis of what she was about.
Happy birthday to the lady.
Amen to that.
I remember going to school during the 3 day week. I remember a sense of unalloyed joy when she was elected.
It’s not till Monday 13th October. But more importantly, she was a brake on the toboggan of State heading for disaster, she only steered it away from the cliff for a few years. She initially adopted Labour’s spending, hiked VAT (a sales tax), kowtowed to the EEC with the Single European Act of 1986, passed an Act to allow for the appalling duty of care to trespassers in 1984 and towards the end went proto-Greta before she was deposed for not doing so fast enough. Importantly, she did break with the Left’s consensus in terms of rhetoric. But her lasting achievements? I cannot think of any other than privatisation becoming accepted.
She did make early mistakes on spending, and VAT. Then again she cut the top rate of income tax, scrapped exchange controls; ended the union closed shop, obtained a EEC budget rebate, etc. she mistakenly thought the Single European Act of 86 would be pro-market: she quickly learned that wasn’t the case.
Yes, she was concerned about global warming. She favoured nuclear power. I don’t think she’d have gone in for the Net Zero nonsense.
It’s true that not all of her changes are irreversible. And in a democracy things can and do change for the better and the worse. We have agency.
Mrs T didn’t buy into the idea of inevitable change; she believed humans can shake their destiny. Perhaps that’s the most important thing about her.
The Bloomberg article is poor from start-to-finish (it even uses terms that Marxist academics invented – such as “authoritarian populist” – and to describe President Trump who has been a VICTIM of authoritarianism, fake, political trials, and so on, and many of his supporters were viciously persecuted – a campaign of authoritarian persecution that Bloomberg tacitly supported) – sadly I would not expect a good article from such as source.
There are two many errors for me to correct at half past eleven at night, but I will correct a few.
Far from being a success Gladstone, as his friend and biographer John Morley sadly related, was a heroic failure – Gladstone’s great objective was to abolish income tax (as has been done after the Napoleonic Wars – income tax only came back in the 1840s) and yet Gladstone lived to see income tax start to RISE and indeed be made “Progressive” by Chancellor Sir William “we are all socialists now” Harcourt. And it was Gladstone’s own administrative reforms (as he ruefully understood) that made income tax easier to collect – he almost managed to destroy income tax in 1874 and had he won the election I firmly believe he would have finished the job and been a great Prime Minister – but Disraeli won the election in 1874 and it is had been downhill for liberty since then with the rise of he size and scope of government.
Winston Churchill gave a brutal (too brutal) assessment of his own time in politics – “I have achieved many things in my life” (held most of the great offices of state – including being Prime Minister – twice) “only, in the end, to achieve nothing at all” – Winston Churchill was not thinking in terms of the defeat of Hitler (I would argue that was a great achievement) – but rather of the two things that brought him into politics – the British Empire and what he called “the British race” – meaning the British people (not a scientific “race” as such).
Churchill lived to see his beloved British Empire collapse – and to see the first signs that the British people (as a people) were starting to culturally decline – and to be challenged on their own island – although, thankfully, he died in 1965 and did not observe the process over the last 60 years (which is continuing now – faster than ever) – which would have led him to sorrow and, perhaps, even to despair – the “Black Dog” as he called it (which some of us know well).
As for Margaret Thatcher – a moderate person (certainly NOT a “revolutionary”) who, after a very bad start – from 1979 to 1982 terrible people such as James Prior and Geoffrey Howe dominated policy – with their endless government spending, taxes and regulations, did manage to reduce tax rates and reduce government spending as a proportion of the economy (Nigel Lawson must be praised on this) and did manage to get some Labour Market deregulation – Norman Tebbit should be praised on this.
The sale of companies the state had nationalized was the correct policy (although these companies are now often owned by foreign governments or have no clear owners at all – which is certainly not good), and it was hardly “revolutionary” as it was merely reversing the nationalizations of a few years before.
What has undermined the Conservative Party was the squalid betrayal of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 – again Margaret Thatcher was a moderate person, in no way a revolutionary, and by betraying her the party was sadly signalling that had no real principles – as can be seen by (for example) Prime Minister John Major saying, as-if-it-was-good-thing “we have spent more money than Labour promised to spend”. As I grow older I am more and more certain it would have been best to leave this world in 1990 – the last 35 years have been a waste of time.
As for the European Union – it was revolutionary putting Britain under this foreign government (the very thing that Britain had gone to war, again and again, to PREVENT – to prevent a threat to British independence by a power dominating Europe), restoring British independence was not revolutionary – it was reversing a revolution.
If only the independence had been real – and not just a nominal independence, with the British government following all the international fashions (from Hate Speech laws, to Covid Lockdowns, to endless government spending – now higher than ever, to endles mass immigration) – and treating the British people with contempt, indeed hatred.
The most important thing about Thatcher to me was that she was a patriot, unlike pretty much every other prime minister of my lifetime who seem to believe that they are Norman lords and I am an obstreperous Anglo Saxon.
Roue le Jour – correct Sir.
There have been two patriotic Prime Ministers in my life time – Margaret Thatcher and the much smeared (viciously smeared “she sank the economy” agitprop campaign) Liz Truss – and both women were betrayed.
It must be remembered that Margaret Thatcher was in no way a revolutionary (if only the lady had been) – indeed government was still vast (vastly too big) after 11 years of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister.
Government spending and overall taxation was vastly higher in 1979 AND in 1990 than it had been in, say, the start of 1964. And in 1964 taxes and government spending were NOT low – they were incredibly high, but still much lower, even as a proportion of the economy, than they were either at the start or the finish of Margaret Thatcher time in office.
What is these Bloomberg person saying – that failing (yes failing) to roll the state back to even 1964 levels is somehow “Revolutionary Zeal”?
Are we allowed to roll back statism at all? Is the rise of the state as a proportion of the economy, which started in around 1870, just supposed to continue? With more and more statism over time – till total tyranny, and the collapse of what is left of society, is “achieved”?
As for the European Union – it is those who seek to put the British people under the rule of this foreign government who are “revolutionaries”, not those who resist it.
And, again, if only we had real independence – not nominal independence, where the British government, establishment, continues to follow all the international fashions, from “Hate Speech” laws to “Net Zero”, showing their contempt, indeed hatred, for the British people.
I wonder what Mr Wooldridge would consider an example of the “real conservatism” which Margaret Thatcher has “destroyed”.
Perhaps Disraeli, who was filled with sneering hated for Lord Liverpool – a Prime Minister who actually achieved things, winning the Napoleonic Wars, restoring gold money and (under pressure from the opposition) abolishing income tax (it did not come back for 20 years) – whilst, at the same time, dramatically reducing government spending (so could cut other taxes as well as abolish income tax) and balance the budget.
What did Disraeli do? Well he campaigned on abolishing income tax in the 1874 election – won that election and then BROKE HIS WORD and actually INCREASED income tax. Disraeli also legalized the obstruction of the entrance of a place of employment – so called “peaceful picketing” (a contradiction – like “dry water”, a “picket line” is a MILITARY term – and picketing is a para military tactic which rests on intimidation) and at least partly put unions above the civil law – no surprise that UNEMPLOYMENT started to become a feature of British life.
Is Disraeli an example of this “true conservatism”?
How about his partner-in-crime Lord Stanley (later the Earl of Derby) – long time leader of the party, whose first political act (in 1831) was to think up a system of state schools in Ireland (shoved into effect by his “liberal” friend Lord Russell – who also imposed the Poor Law Tax on Ireland in 1838 and in the late 1840s dramatically increased the Poor Law Tax and dragged all of Ireland to Hell).
The people of Ireland were not asked if they wanted a system of state schools – Lord Stanley had a whim, and that was that.
Lord Stanley / Earl of Derby had lots of other whims in his life – “Social Reforms” they were called (as Disraeli’s antics were also called) – J.S. Mill rightly summed up the political philosophy of Stanley/Derby in one word – “liberticide”.
Is this the “true conservatism” that Mr Wooldridge says that (in reality very moderate) “revolutionary” Margaret Thatcher destroyed?
Lord Liverpool, Canning, Prosperity Robinson, Huskisson (sadly killed in the first railway accident), and the others, would not agree with Mr Wooldridge on this matter.
@Johnathan Pearce
Yes, she was concerned about global warming. She favoured nuclear power. I don’t think she’d have gone in for the Net Zero nonsense.
I find it ironic that the left continue to this day to loathe her, yet a very large part of her time in office was consumed with shutting down the coal mines. One wonders how an Arthur Scargill would play today demanding more fossil fuels while being part of an intellectual left that demands net zero.
BTW, I think on screen portrayals of her have been terrible. There is a BBC film called “The Falklands Play” where she is played well by Patricia Hodge, the the two big ones “The Iron Lady” by Meryl Streep is both weird in how the story is told, insulting in how she is described, and entirely misses the point of who she was. And as to Gillian Anderson’s portrayal in “The Crown”, it is nothing short of disgusting. She is portrayed as a Richard III type character including the stooped stature as if she were a hunchback.
She saved Britain from total collapse and irrelevancy and was one of the three primary people responsible for bringing down Communism. I grew up during her premiership, and she was a towering figure that deeply influenced my sense of right and wrong, value and justice. I have read a couple of biographies, but it has been a while, you have inspired me to dust them off.
Salut to that grand old Iron Lady.
Prime Minister Balfour summed up this “real” or “true” conservatism – against nasty “reactionaries” like me.
Supposedly “Social Reform”, i.e. more and more government spending and regulations, reduced the appeal of socialism.
Why should more government spending and more regulations reduce the appeal of socialism? Well, Prime Minister Balfour (and others like him) explain, because more government spending and more regulations will make conditions of life better than would otherwise be the case.
If that was true, it is NOT true – it is the OPPOSITE of the truth, then the economic and social argument against socialism collapses and socialism should be, at least from an economic and social point of view, introduced right-now (today) – as socialism is the logical conclusion of this “Social Reform”, this ever bigger and more interventionist government.
With “friends” like Disraeli, Derby, Balfour…. liberty does not need enemies.
As for what has crippled the modern Conservative Party – principle-free-zones such as Prime Ministers John Major, David Cameron, Theresa May, Alexander Johnson, and R. Sunak, should be considered.
Are they the free market roll-back-the-state types that Mr Woolridge claims are filled with “revolutionary zeal”?
In reality they were the opposite – they went along with establishment doctrine on just about everything.
“But Brexit” – more than one person (person who I trust) had told me that Mr Johnson was horrified when the British people voted to restore their independence – and never had the slightest intention of that independence becoming real, becoming anything more than nominal independence.
Fraser Orr – yes indeed.
And very well written Sir.
Johnathan Pearce is quite correct in pointing out that Margaret Thatcher was attacking the idea of a Collective Entity called “society” – rather that society being the voluntary interactions of human beings.
Edmund Burke held the same view of society as Margaret Thatcher – and Mr Woolridge is ignorant of both Margaret Thatcher and Edmund Burke.
Far from being like Derby or Disraeli – Edmund Burke was a strictly limited government man, and his attitude to change was NOT about it being gradual and peaceful – but, rather, about it being in the right DIRECTION – the direction of more liberty (private property and voluntary interaction) not less liberty (private property and voluntary interaction). In this Edmund Burke was the opposite of Derby and Disraeli – for all their hollow claims to admire him, and the opposite of so many people who cite him (without reading his works – or studying his life).
That the French Revolution was about bigger government – the stealing of property (for example from the Church – but also from others) and about fiat money (Burke, rightly, detested fiat money – money must be an actual commodity such as gold and silver, not the whims of governments, or the squalid tricks of Credit Bubble bankers) was what turned him against the French Revolution – from 1790 onwards (i.e. BEFORE The Terror – although Burke predicted it).
It was not about the French Revolution being too fast and what not – it was about the French Revolution being change in the wrong DIRECTION – talk of liberty, but practice of statism.
On Disraeli – I think one incident sums him up….
On being questioned about his housing Bill (which became an Act of Parliament) it became clear that Disraeli knew very little about his own Bill. What mattered to Disraeli was the state presenting itself as “helping the people” (by spending and regulations) – NOT whether the measure actually did good or HARM.
I am reminded of Prime Minister Johnson – pushing various things he was told to push, the “deal” with the European Union, the insane Covid restrictions and wild spending, “Net Zero”, and-so-on, with only the most vague idea of what these things were about.
Fraser Orr,
A couple of observations.
Margaret Thatcher didn’t close down the coal mines out of a concern for climate change, but simply because they were a nationalised industry, which was losing the the taxpayer money. She was also continuing a policy which had been pursued by successive British governments for decades. For example, in the 1960s the Labour government, with Harold Wilson as PM, closed hundreds of mines.
And I’ve always believed there were four people who were chiefly responsible for bringing down the Soviet Union: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope Jean Paul II – and Lech Walesa, now largely forgotten, but whose Solidarity Union first challenged Soviet rule in Poland, back in 1980.
Schrodinger’s Dog – excellent points Sir.
And, on the coal mines, many could have been saved – had “Collective Bargaining” (see W.H. Hutt “The Strike Threat System” for how this is a Government Enforced system – pushed by Acts of Parliament that could-and-should be repealed) been ended – far from the National Union of Mine Workers “fighting for jobs” – it was its own activities, over many years, that had destroyed the competitiveness of the British coal industry.
On Communism I agree with the names you mention – but add one.
William Casey Director of the CIA.
There have been two good Directors of the CIA in my lifetime (indeed since the Agency was founded in the 1940s) – William Casey and, I believe, the present Director of the CIA.
We shall see if I am right or wrong about my guess concerning the present Director.
On the Whig-Liberal side of party politics in the 19th century it must NOT be supposed they were all roll back the state types either.
Indeed even back in the 18th century it is clear that Charles James Fox did not share Edmund Burke’s strictly limited view of the state – indeed fault lines between the two men were emerging long before the French Revolution – for example on free trade with Ireland (and NOT just because Mr Burke was born and raised in Ireland) – to Mr Fox as long as the state was under the control of Parliament, the state could do XYZ good things – this view was rejected by Edmund Burke.
In the 19th century – Whig-Liberal Lord John Russell, far from being an enemy of the semi Collectivist Tory Lord Stanley (later the Earl of Derby) thought on horribly similar lines – supporting the introduction of a state school system in Ireland in 1831, the Poor Law Tax of 1838, the massive increase of this tax in the late 1840s and-so-on. And in England Lord Russell (who became Prime Minister – so he is not some fringe figure) supported everything from bank bailouts, to government teacher training schemes.
When I was young the history books said (and most likely still do) that Lord Russell supported “laissez faire” he was, in fact, an ardent state interventionist. Weirdly English speaking historians seem to believe that “laissez faire” just means “free trade” (meaning foreign trade – which is a small part of trade overall) and that supporting increasing government spending, taxes and regulations is just fine – indeed not even worthy of mention.
There were broadly three groups in the mid 19th century Liberal Party – Lord Russell and his supporters who were (contrary to the history books) state interventionists, Lord Palmerston and his supporters (they even went to different social gatherings from the Russell supporters) who supported intervention overseas – but NOT statism “Social Reform” (ever bigger government – the schemes of Sir Edwin Chadwick and so on) at home, and John Bright and his supporters – who was against state intervention, both against it at home (hence, for example, his speeches against the Factory Acts – mocked by the smugly Collectivist school-boy Bertrand Russell some years later), and against it overseas – hence John Bright’s opposition to the Crimean War.
The gradual entry of Gladstone and other “Peelite” Conservatives into the Liberal Party, complicated this situation.