Why Conservatives are still asking: What would Margaret Thatcher do?

Why are people at Conservative Party Conference 2024 still talking about Margaret Thatcher? Because she gave Tories something to believe in, says Alys Denby

It’s Conservative Party conference and one subject that’s guaranteed to come up at any gathering of Tories is Margaret Thatcher. The palms of upholstered older party members moisten as they share reminiscences of their encounters with her while leadership candidates jostle to position themselves as her true heir. 

But why does the Iron Lady still excite such passion? It’s not just perverse nostalgia for the shoulder pads and privatisations of the 1980s. Nor is it solely because she won three elections and one war. It’s because she gave Conservatives something to believe in.

There’s plenty to dispute about her legacy, but there’s no question that Conservatives have struggled to regain intellectual clarity since she left office. In the last 14 years Tory thinking has pin-balled between patrician patriotism under David Cameron, communitarianism with Theresa May, the greater glory of Boris Johnson under Boris Johnson, free market fundamentalism with Liz Truss and technocratic meddling with Rishi Sunak. And that’s being generous – putting labels on these projects implies a coherence they rarely achieved.

A less conservative country

As a result, the country is no more conservative than it was when they assumed office. Taxes are the highest they’ve been since Attlee, home ownership is a distant dream for many and the rule of law has been eroded by riots, prisoner releases and a breakdown of trust in policing. Basic economic lessons, like printing money causes inflation and that the Laffer curve exists, have been forgotten. The wealthy, talented and ambitious are leaving an increasingly shabby country. There could hardly be a clearer demonstration of Conquest’s law that any organisation that is not explicitly and constitutionally right wing sooner or later becomes left wing.

But to reverse that drift, you have to know what you mean by ‘right wing’. There is a Lord Salisburian tendency among some on the right to not ‘do’ ideology. Our almost-instinct almost true: conservatism is just common sense. But the left doesn’t see it that way. The Labour Party’s recent transformation has been a factional fight, not a battle of ideas. Corbynites and Keir Starmer’s ‘centrists’ share the same Marxist heritage and the same fundamental belief that governments are better than individuals at running their lives.

Keith Joseph, the philosophical architect of the Thatcher revolution, understood that this meant it was hopeless to try and meet them in the centre. The “middle ground” as he defined it, was: “the lowest common denominator of assumed electoral calculus, defined not by reference to popular feeling, but by splitting the difference between Labour’s position and the Conservatives”. Since Labour’s position is itself an accommodation with its fringes, the middle ground becomes a leftward ratchet towards socialism. 

Unless Conservatives make a moral case for markets, freedom and competition, we’ll end up with ever higher public spending and ever more dependency on the state, not through choice but through compromise.

So while this year’s gathering in Birmingham has been called a beauty contest between potential opposition leaders, it should also be an identity parade. Until Conservatives can work out who they are and what they stand for, they’ll be stranded in a conference centre forever asking: “what would Maggie do?”

Alys Denby is speaking at Conservative Party Conference on a panel entitled ‘What would Maggie do? Lessons from the Thatcher revolution’ alongside John Redwood, Rachel Wolf and Lord Hannan on 30 September, 17.50, CPS and CapX gallery, Hall 4