Main Edition
US
FR
Main Edition
US
FRThatcher's children: the Tory leadership hopefuls.
It’s not easy judging a prospective leader. In 1955, Anthony Eden was the most impressive prime minister-in-waiting that Britain had ever seen. Put to the test in the greatest conflagration in world history, Eden had emerged with his reputation not only intact, but enhanced. He was brave, smart, absurdly handsome and experienced. And yet, within two years of taking over from Winston Churchill, he resigned as a broken man, having overseen the worst foreign policy blunder in Britain’s postwar history — until Iraq.
Eden’s fate is a reminder of the challenge currently facing the Conservative Party. Policies, experience and ideology matter, but not as much as character and, above all, luck. William Hague was a formidable politician who had spent most of his life gliding effortlessly towards the premiership, only to become leader of the opposition at the wrong time, unable to do anything about the extraordinary popularity of Tony Blair.
The task today is even harder. The Conservative Party’s defeat earlier this year was not only worse than John Major’s in 1997, but the worst the Tory party has seen in its entire 190-year history. And yet, the scale of the Labour Party’s early difficulties in office has given the party’s leadership candidates hope that the situation might actually be salvageable. After all, if Keir Starmer can turn a calamitous defeat into a landslide victory in the space of five years, why can’t they?
What has struck me, in conversations with the current leadership candidates, MPs and aides, is how often they turn to Margaret Thatcher as their source of inspiration — a figure who won the premiership 45 years ago in entirely different circumstances to those that exist today. Yet Thatcher has gained an almost mythological status in British politics today, bearing little resemblance to the politician herself.
Her myth takes on a different aspect for each of the candidates. For James Cleverly, she was the leader who brought back aspiration; for Tom Tugendhat, she was the leader who brought back British power, at home and abroad. For Robert Jenrick, meanwhile, it is the provincial Toryism that she represented which most appeals, while for Kemi Bedenoch it is her status as a “global icon” of free markets.
All these accounts contain elements of truth, of course, but as the conservative commentator, T.E. Utley, frustratedly pointed out at the height of her power in the 1980s, almost all popular accounts of Thatcher underestimate the extent to which she was also, fundamentally, a far more pragmatic and skilful politician than she is usually given credit for, willing to dodge, weave and compromise to win power and then keep it. “It is inconceivable that her devotion to doctrine would ever persuade her to do anything which was plainly politically suicidal,” Utley observed.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeMargaret Thatcher’s greatness as a leader is misunderstood, not just by those on the Left but by conservatives as well. Her premiership gave birth to Thatcherite economics and her memory is largely viewed through this prism. But that was a by-product, not central to her political vision. What made her exceptional as a leader – and so different from your typical career politician – was her passionate steadfastness in cleaving to what she believed to be essentially wholesome in the life of a nation. In an emerging age of Laid Back, she was Miss Shiny Shoes; in an emerging age of moral relativism, she was one for moral absolutism.
Of course an anti-woke counter-revolution cannot simply invent a Thatcher just because it needs one. But it can recognise the template. Contrary to the thesis of this article her strength was that she would certainly have called a spade a spade, loud and clear and damn the consequences. She would have done it in the manner of a strict mother wanting to curb our nonsense for our own good. She would not have fallen into the rhetorical rabbit hole of trying to frame arguments against ‘identity politics’ using its own tendentious terminology. Asked to discuss issues relating to the LGTB+ community she would probably have told the interviewer to stop talking such nonsense. She would have said it insistently and would not have shut up however impolitic the subsequent verbal joust became. Asked to comment on ‘systemic racism’, she would have wagged her finger and asserted that Britain was the least racist society that had ever been and how crazy to have lurched – in a couple of generations – from racism against coloured people to racism against white people.
That is why she was undefeatable at the ballot box for ten years….. and only brought down by the limp-wristed Lefties-on-a slight-time-delay that have made up the majority of the Tory Party these last thirty years. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/mrs-thatcher-and-the-good-life
She was blindly driving the Conservatives to electoral defeat in 1991/2.
Yes after three momentus election victories. You should reflect that, in democracies, governments rarely survive for longer than hers.
Perhaps you should reflect that you clearly implied that Mrs T would have won a fourth time if she had not been brought down by her own party first.
I think many of the Tory politicians resented her vitality and were very pro Europe. Edith Cresson , French Prime Minsiter under Mitterrand was amazed by her sexual charisma which is a form of energy.
By the late 1980s most Tories were the feeble types who were traumatised by Suez, the union strikes and wanted to be closer aligned to the EEC /EU for safety . Better hang onto nurse in case of fear of worse. GK Chesterton.
Belloc, not Chesterton, surely?
The ‘maternity pay’ furore illustrates an interesting modern political probem. Large parts of political policies and decision making are now off-limits or taboo. Political leaders have their hands tied – triple-lock pensions, NHS funding, Net Zero, GDPR, immigration (though loosened a little) and, until Starmer’s flip, Winter Fuel allowance.
Badenoch raises maternity pay and all of a sudden Tories turn puce, panicking over what the chattering classes over at the Guardian will say.
With so many locks and barriers, ninety percent of government spending and action is locked in. The only questions for politicians are which taxes to raise or tweak to pay for it all, which NGOs to fund, and the odd bit of policy around education. Not surprisingly, the only policy toys they really get to play with are fringe weird stuff like Rwanda, online speech laws, and grandstanding speeches on foreign policy.
Parliament, in the UK, is supposed to be sovereign but now feels toothless with policy constrained by lawyers, NGOs and international agreements. When you do put big questions to the electorate they seem to want to be liberated from these constraints – less compulsion, not more.
This is the exact point. Jenrick no doubt has flaws, but at the very least he’s talking about the right point.
The reason we end up with ideas like Rwanda is because governments are so bound that they have to come up with wacky stuff like that to get around the legal minefield. The problem is not so much that Sunak went down the Rwanda route, it is that he was forced to do so. Indeed other EU countries are looking at in some way outsourcing their asylum seekers so it is right to point out that this is not just a UK issue.
Maybe there is a point to be made that governments should start to put more explicit time limits in. ‘We will have a triple lock to the end of the Parliament, but make no promises after that date.’
The article says, ‘Those close to Starmer believe that Robert Jenrick has come closest to having the kind of political analysis that could be most problematic for Labour.’ It would be interesting to know why Starmer himself doesn’t feel able to make a similar point.
It is the issue of our times Sam, the impotence of administrations due to legal constraints. The result is that the only way to really dispense with our problems is to out source them and so unwanted immigrants must be disposed of in Africa just like our massive amount of plastic waste is disposed of. First World governments pat themselves on the back that they are abiding by ecological protocols but in reality our profligate waste is a floating island of filth in the Pacific Ocean damaging eco systems and life for a small population that we needn’t think about.
I don’t think it’s quite right to blame the politicians or the Guardian for this. It’s voters, too. Mothers (and fathers) don’t want maternity pay cut. There’s a distinction between ‘taboo’ and ‘unpopular’, and a lot of spending cuts — just like a lot of tax increases — are in the latter category. Lots of people on here would like a much smaller state but they’re in the (election-losing) minority.
Very good points.
None of the buffoons responsible for the most cataclysmic electoral defeat in modern history should be taken seriously. Cleverly and Tugendhat are deeply unimpressive military blowhards and Jenrick is wet in both senses of the term. We need to emphasise conflict and focus as a priority on home turf. The only true leader who is largely untarnished by the past is Badenoch. She is articulate, has a powerful back story as a black immigrant woman and only she can assemble a new cadre of politicians who can rebuild the Tories. It may be too much to assume this can be done before the next election as the rebuilding process must be root and branch, drawing on the very best til now disillusioned talent in the country. Take a leaf out of Trump’s playbook – and make Britain Great Again. Be prepared to take on the establishment, clean out the civil services, reform the House of Lords, take control of fiscal and monetary policy, (Bank of England has totally lost its way)and radically overhaul the NHS, government’s biggest Achilles’ heal to a European public/private mutual system. Dismantle county lines drug gangs and gang masters who control the immigration racket with heavy penalties for organiser of crime and not the victims.
Firstly Author’s point about Thatcher being more pragmatist than the subsequent mythology – true to a point, but eventual hubris regarding Poll Tax rigidity did for her.
The point that Tories, and the Right more broadly, mixed up slogans and statements of ‘desire’ for actual thought-through practical policy rings true. Now back in Opposition they’ll have the tendency to revert to slogans and ‘desires’ but without any real practical policy formulation. The stuff about ECHR being a classic example – if we left does it make returning claimants much easier if we don’t have diplomatic ties with their home nation? As regards legal migration where is the analysis of why certain sectors came to rely too much upon such recruitment and what a Govt needs to do about that?
And the poor investment culture in the UK – the Tories offer virtually nothing but a prayer the ‘market’ will ride to the rescue. It won’t. There is a paucity of real discussion on why public and private sector investment so low and it just gets suppressed with twaddle about higher income tax rates which are fundamentally not the issue.
There is the possibility that elements of the UK public will fall for simplistic slogans again, but that doesn’t solve our problems.
You’ve lost me.
How would leaving the ECHR mean losing diplomatic ties with other countries ? It’s an optional add on feature, not a requirement isn’t it ?
ECHR irrelevant to whether we have diplomatic ties with the Taliban, Assad or the warlords running Libya. Even further afield the ties may be problematic – in the Sahel etc. Thus getting agreement to fly those back who’ve had claims rejected problematic. Doesn’t mean impossible but needs proper engagement with how we’ll handle this.
Why not simply say no more visas will be issued to a country that refuses to take back failed asylum seekers?
Not just asylum seekers. There are many thousands of over-stayers and illegals living in their relatives’ garden sheds while the authorities turn a blind eye.
Not sure it’s a blind eye HB, we just can’t track them v easily and immense resource injection would be needed. ID cards would help.
Yes, ID cards would certainty help. It’s clear that one of the UK’s attractions for illegal immigrants and overstayers is the fact that they can easily simply disappear from view, unlike in most of continental Europe. In addition, without proper knowledge of who is in the country, planning for education and health provision, and operating a welfare state, become very difficult.
How many Visas we been issuing to the Taliban or Assad BB? Something in what you say but marginal impact.
But I don’t think that’s quite the issue. Per the article I have actually been surprised by Robert Jenrick who, as the article says, does seem to have a more compelling analysis than anyone else in that election so far. I’m not sure he knows what to do about it, but I believe his thinking is far more right than wrong. And to be clear, I’m as surprised as the next man to hear myself being positive about RJ. Indeed it is interesting to note that on paper he should have lost his seat at the election but his constituents returned him (with a much reduced majority).
‘The 14 years of Tory government were very bad, Jenrick states, because the government showed itself incapable of delivering the systemic reforms that would allow it to deliver what it promised. Only by clearing away the bureaucratic and legal obstacles binding the government’s hands can voters’ wishes be delivered.’
What governments have done is bind their hands and their successors hands. They have gone for very long-term contracts well over the length of a Parliament (HS2 for example, or 40 year tuition fee structures) or they have made expensive promises for their successors to keep – triple lock pensions for example, or ‘fuel payments’ to a now far-wealthier pensioner set.
Keir Starmer on the fuel payment deserves credit for doing what his Conservative and Coalition predecessors were too cowardly to do. We should not be spending (well, borrowing) for propertied pensioners to be getting an WFP.
Governments have joined intergovernmental and supranational organisations that have changed dramatically over time into binding structural features that can not readily be reversed by elected politicians. That constitutional deficit was by some distance the most compelling argument against the EU. The problem is not the EU or the ECHR as such, it is the open ended and effectively permanent nature of that integration that is the problem. All Keir Starmer is doing on immigration is running into the same problems Rishi Sunak did because those problems are systemic. Leaving the EU did not result in ‘taking back control,’ but it was a necessary precondition. One of Jenrick’s points about immigration was that as immigration minister he was very heavily bound.
These problems of elected politicians being bound irrespective of voters are, of course, not unique to the UK. We have seen similar concerns aired across the world. But anyone who dismisses the Jenrick analysis as ‘populism’ simply isn’t thinking deeply enough about the structural problems in this picture.
Now to be clear: there certainly are arguments that can and must be had about constraint of government and indeed the powers of corporate interests. And arguments about the right level for decision-making between national and local. But the assessment that governments are too bound by these long-dated and open ended agreements does I think have merit.
We’ve been in NATO for 75 years and bound by it’s Treaty as one example. So I don’t think it’s being ‘too bound’ that’s the problem. It’s politicians thinking they can’t really tell us the truth about the consequences that’s more the problem IMO, and that creates a self-perpetuating cycle of deceit. So they hide behind some unspecified ‘constraint’ because it’s easier and avoids a degree of responsibility.
Robert ‘Generic’ knows full well the UK economy will increasingly rely on legal immigration in the decades going forward as our population ages. He’s smart enough to know that i’m sure, and hence focuses on the illegal element which as we know, whilst significant, is much the smaller element. He also well knows the role of the ECHR v peripheral to dealing with drivers of illegal migration. We and all the EU could leave it tmoro and the people movement pressure will continue.
We’ve yet to hear any Tory talk honesty about these real challenges, because, fundamentally, too many worry we aren’t ready yet for the much more adult conversation needed.
Personally I think we need much more focus on assimilation measures/requirements and less on the ability to reduce the numbers massively. Kemi was onto something about values migrants can’t have and expect to come here but it needs much more open debate IMO. Illegal migration should remain just that but we should untangle it from legal and be much more honest about that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
why public and private sector investment so low
If you had any experience in the private sector you would understand why investment is low. The disincentives are too great – too much paperwork, over-complicated taxes, employment law that makes hiring people excessively risky and time- and resource consuming, too much petty and largely pointless regulation (GDPR, KYC etc etc etc), governments run by people who’ve never been anywhere near the coalface, that use the treasury as a box of sweets for their chums in the bureaucracies. And on and on.
Above all, spectacularly risk-averse banks that are only interested in the value of your house. In the US you can raise money on your track record and a good business plan. Not here.
I know many small business owners (myself included) who have had the opportunity to expand but chosen not to. Who needs the grief?
Brexit and the extra paperwork no doubt helped then?
The ‘likes’ of DeepMind’ which we lost to Google, much more because of inability to access UK investment capital. They wouldn’t have grown to that size if the other constraints had been that significant and California has some pretty tough regs too. Just one example of a range of high calibre companies we’ve lost for similar reason.
Oh dear, your Brexit syndrome really does take you down some rabbit holes. Only a tiny, tiny fraction of small businesses have ever been involved in trade with Europe. You should stay away from economics.
Of course I’m mindful of your elite US education. (I got mine largely in the RN). However you won’t find many businesses that create substantial wealth for a country not involved in import/export, and hence the Brexit bureaucracy addition generated v important – as confirmed by Chamber of Commerce.
Now if you were just running say a Hairdressers business?
For my entire life I would have rather cut off my hand than vote Tory. But right now I would vote for Badenoch. A pale male Labour leader spending the next 5 years at PMQs facing an African woman who doesn’t believe in identity politics is something too good to let pass.
Absolutely right…let’s hope the Tories can see it…
I know, it would be popcorn time.
Scoring points a PMQs is not the best measure of political effectiveness
I find myself in exactly the same position, I cannot see KS laying a glove on her. The difficulties he inherited from the Torys combined with the constraints imposed by the metropolitan socialist dominated Lab Party give him so little room to manoeuvre. He does not have an internal political compass to guide him either, so KS will look like a boxer that has taken a brutal upper cut – out on his feet and unable to defend himself as the blows land.
Her professional background is also a great asset, her analysis is based on fact determining action as opposed to scrabbling for information that backs up a dogma postulated in a vacuous press desperately peddling a few extra copies.
I see her as the the only leader(Tory or otherwise) that can reverse the drift of votes to Reform.
If Eden had not buckled to Dulles’ threats of a run on the pound, the 1956 Suez affair could have been a triumph rather than a debacle for Britain.
And a run on the pound would have been exactly the discipline the British state needed to shrink the state to prewar levels instead of expanding it into the socialistic bureaucratic nightmare it became by the 1970s and which even Thatcher could only brake superficially.
Yes I have often wondered why Eden caved in to US threats, at a time when the UK surely had the scope to resist notwithstanding the iniquitous burden deliberately imposed by the US through its postwar loan to the UK. I suppose a large part of the answer is the fetish over sterling strength post-WW1 which persisted in the UK political elite at least into the 1960s. However, there’s also the issue of the Keynsian system that ran so successfully from 1945 until the early 1970s, in which the exchange rates of Western currencies were effectively tied to the US dollar rate – and maybe as early as 1956 Eden feared a very heavy penalty for the UK if it bucked the system (think how panicky John Major’s government were at the prospect of being ejected from the ERM in 1992).
Were any of you around when Mrs Thatcher appeared on a post 6 pm BBC news programme with a rather aggressive interviewer? She had just abolished free school milk in schools. I only had half an ear open but suddenly realised that here was a person who was answering the question she was asked, to the horror of the interviewer and not putting up with any nonsense from him. The best moment was when she was asked why she had done this and she replied to the effect that it was a waste of public money as few children drank it or needed it. She wiped the floor with the interviewer who was one of the nasty, aggressive types. I really took notice of her after that. A plain speaker who saved Britain by determining to break the power of tyrannical trade unions. It was the working classes who realised this and voted for her and freedom from trade union oppression. That is her legacy not her economics.
I think you are absolutely right about Thatcher’s positive legacy being the breaking of the power of the trade unions of her day. Unfortunately, her negative legacy has been just as important, not just the wholesale destruction of industries with far too little done to attempt to deal with the consequences (as has been noted in this comments thread) but the spreading (along with Ronald Reagan) of a grotesquely simplistic notion of how capitalist economies work best. What I personally think of as Simpleton Economics is still everywhere: Cut taxes! Slash regulations! Get the damn Government out of the way and give the Private Sector its head! and then, as night follows day, the economy will flourish as never before, creating a wonderful world of prosperity and happiness for all. Oh really?
Interesting analysis…and very likely correct.
As an aside, it was, of course, Jim Callaghan who torpedoed Barbara Castle’s “In Place of Strife” labour relations proposals. He therefore set the timebomb which would blow up his own government. I don’t know if Castle ever gave her own views on that turn of events.
Since Barbara Castle was one of the most forthright politicians you could imagine, i think it’s unlikely we wouldn’t have heard of her views if she had. I could be wrong (i was very young at the time) but it’s not something i recall.
On another note, Badenoch could perhaps be viewed as a modern-day Castle. Forthright, not afraid of controversy – but does she have the political skills to win over her party? The author (who’s an Unherd treasure, almost uniquely positioned to comment on our political times with his inside access to Labour, hopefully not to be curtailed) poses that very question.
As a supporter of neither Labour or Tory parties (both are possibly dysfunctional beyond repair) but nevertheless looking for any possible sign of national renewal, i hope the answer is Yes, whereas Jenrick just appears “same old / same old”.
Tom – you are incorrect in your analysis. You don’t look old enough to have lived through the Thatcher years other than as a young child (if I’m wrong please share your anti ageing secret). I’m 56 and was Twelve when Thatcher became prime Minister and Twenty Three when she was ousted. She was acually all the things the candidates mentioned. In terms of vision, delivery, wit, and integrity, she was a political Colossus (however imperfect) compared to the 4 also rans we have today. Love her or loath her, nobody cogsinant who lived in the UK at that time would challenge that view – regards NHP
I was going to make the same comment – I also got triggered by his claims of authority on Thatcher when he was born in 1984 and basically missed it all. But what he actually says about Thatcher is valid and he doesn’t give any personal views. Once I got past that, I appreciated the article.
What the current crew need to learn from Thatcher is that you must know what you believe and pursue that regardless of what your own party (or the opposition, or the media) think or say. And this needs to have sufficient public resonance. Respect and authority have to be earned. It seems mainly a question of self confidence and willpower. That and a strong enough team of like minded people around you with the other skills that you will inevitably lack.
And it’s not like they’re up again a premier league team in Labour.
Thatcher is remembered because she had genuine character and authority.
Bit too much hagiography though also a problem. Her judgment deserted her in last few years – e.g Poll tax, a further recession triggered, losing some key Secs of State etc. Hubris after some success did for her as much as anyone and she stopped listening to wise advice. Good lesson for subsequent leaders in that.
Furthermore her industrial legacy decidedly mixed. Correct to challenge and defeat likes of Scargill, but she offered nothing for these areas subsequently and accelerated the North/South divide.
She was dead right on Falklands and Nuclear deterrence of course. I’d add she was right too on the Single Market just for spice.
No spice. The single market then bore no relationship to what we have now in Europe.
And she was a racist who supported Apartheid? Hitler was stupid and stubborn too eh?
As someone slightly older than yourself during the Thatcher years, I can’t help noticing that your own commentary, and that of others here, is blindly positive and generous towards her. She had determination all right, but to many of us at the time she was also something of a looney, seeing everything only from her own side (having ‘blinkered vision’ was a common press description.) Because of this, she was deeply divisive, and her policies were very much of the ‘divide and conquer’ variety. Those she catered for did prosper, but the whole country did not, and damage she did has still not been repaired. Added to that division, we have acquired a variety of competing cultural currents that carry on unresolved. The U.K. is now a country very much in need of a sense of unity, which does not seem likely to be provided by any of our current politicians of any party, and looking back to Margaret Thatcher for inspiration is not going to help.
I disagree with your assertion that UK needs “a sense of unity”. In fact, there is no realistic scenario in which I can see true national unity; even during major wars of survival we have never had unity. What we nearly achieved at such times was a broad sense of purpose (though not of process) and that is something we very much do not have at the moment.
Our biggest current political failing is that policies are built and sold as solutions to individual problems. MT’s policies were driven by a system of values, not always successfully and not without some pragmatic problem solving on the way. Today we have almost all politicians blithely referring to British values without any coherent picture of what those values are in practice. The most obvious case is that of “tolerance”, which is really a begrudging acceptance, but used as if it were something positive and inclusive. It isn’t! Politicians make themselves hypocrites every time they use the term as an aspiration. Not of them tolerates things they label as intolerable! In fact, we are roundly denounced if we “tolerate” gypsies on the common, immigrants in the local hotel or drag queens reading to children; we are supposed to “welcome” them.
We need a political leader who defines and demonstrates a coherent set of values around which the majority can gather. A minority will have different sets of values and be free to express them because the most important accepted values would be “treat others with the same respect you expect to receive”. Civic violence, destruction of others’ property, disruption of lawful business and leisure, and causing severe suffering of others for one’s own gain would NOT be tolerated; they show lack of respect for others. Insisting that your own tribal law and customs trump national law and long-established traditions would be unacceptable; they show lack of respect.
VALUES, VALUES, VALUES!
I also sald she was imprefect and loved and loathed. At least she was true leader, and she didn’t duck hard decisions for fear of not being liked. Broadly she transformed GB. Far more prople benefited than lost out. What specific damage did she do that lasts until today?
Perhaps you haven’t heard about the ‘levelling up’ policies later governments have tried, mostly directed at the North of England, but also Scotland and Wales. They were a response to the results of Thatcher policies in the 80’s. She had successes, of course, but they were too narrow, hence her own party threw her out. Her legend has become much bigger than her actual accomplishments.
Too few since 1945 realise that we have to compete in the World and that other countries have improved their technical training and industrial capabilities. Competition has become stiffer.
In the 1960s it was the last chance to move un and semi skilled people into advanced manufacturing. Switzerland has a very cost of living however it makes very expensive advanced watches and other products. The West cannot compete with the developing World on price only in technical advancement.
Those organisation which understand we have to compete and win on worldwide level are successful, for example Rolls Royce aero engines but there are too few.
Margaret Thatcher didn’t do much to improve British industries. She destroyed failing ones, but didn’t replace them, opting instead for a globalised approach suiting financiers. Rolls Royce still make aero engines, but not cars. Some of the cars, now made by German manufacturers have Volkswagen engines, and are not made in Britain.
Britain was close to being finished by the vast debts of the nationlised industries; very high taxes making technically able people to work overseas and the power of un and semi skilled unions to stop technical modernisation.
If the technical modernisation and creation of profitable nationalised industries had taken place under Wilson, Britain had not had to go the IMF in 1976, Thatcher may not have elected.
Basically Thatcher is the gardener who undertakes drastic pruning, clearing out of dead plants and clearing undergrowth to restore the garden. The next step was to plant based upon the resources of those who owned the garden. If one prunes carefully and severely an old plant which has poor stragly growth, is diseased and has dead material, how next year if watered and manured, strong vigorous growth can occur.
I was at Uni just after the miners’ strike and a firm Thatcherite. One of my best friends was from a mining community and hated her. BUT he was also the first to admit he respected her because you knew where she stood and that she believed what she said.
“Do not do what your enemy wants you to do. Do what your enemy would least like you to do.”
This paraphrase from Sun Tzu’s book The Art of War, written in the 5th century BC, is as apposite today as it was then.
The candidate in the Tory leadership contest that Labour has tried to destroy more than any other is Kemi Badenoch. They’re terrified of her. Therefore, she is the best choice.
Labour would also like her to make herself ridiculous. Therefore she should be pragmatic about what she says, and not give them any opportunity to discredit her in any way that doesn’t end up helping her.
She should espouse the idea of withdrawing from the ECHR’s ongoing jurisdiction, and promise a gradual repeal of directives that do not work in Britain’s interests. That will neutralise Jenrick’s USP.
Finally, she should amend the Climate Change Act to allow the Government to regain sovereignty. Currently our Government is obliged by law to embark on the costliest project in our history which, dwarfed by the rest of the world’s energy strategies, will make no difference whatsoever to whatever the climate is going to do. Outsourcing government to an unelected body in an area that will bankrupt Britain and do nothing useful to help the world is bonkers.
Kemi Badenoch would give Britain the best chance at salvaging the terrible situation we’ve created, into which our Labour government seems determined to plunge us further.
Teresa May was half correct when she observed that elections are won from the centre ground. But she left out ‘by Labour governments’. Tory elections are won from the centre-right, because natural Tories sit there. Reform did well by occupying that ground, while the Tories went in blind pursuit of the left-centre ground and voters who were never going to vote for them.
…absolutely correct. When speaking of the “Centre Ground” the Labour Party have practically always forgotten that in a “conservative country” (which we still are)…most of them are on the Extreme Left…but sadly the Conservatives have started to emulate them. Hence Reform, who should all be staunch Tories…but feel their party has left them for an imagined “Centre Ground” much further left than it actually is…
…quite possibly because of the influence of the BBC on the public discourse…because they vastly more left-wing even than Labour….but relentlessly propagandise to the effect that they are “Impartial” and seem to take rather a lot of us in.
The proof? Brexit…biggest ever popular vote for anything…and yet who believes that any…ANY…BBC manager, producer or presenter was anything but a fanatical Europhile? So how could such a place either be “impartial” or “centre ground” on any matter of importance?
“It is inconceivable that her devotion to doctrine would ever persuade her to do anything which was plainly politically suicidal,”
Er, poll tax anyone?
Jenrick first entered Parliament in 2014, Cleverly and Tugendhat in 2015, and Badenoch in 2017.
Thatcher, Baldwin and Heath had been an MP for 15 years each before they became leader. For Bonar Law, it was 11. For Neville Chamberlain, it was 19. On the other hand Starmer had been in Parliament for just 4, before he became leader.
Do politicians get promoted too early ? I suspect we will find out very soon.
Bob Hawke was elected to the Aussie parliament in December 1980; in February 1983 he was promoted to leader of the opposition; in March 1983 he led Labor to power. But he had been in the public domain since the 1960s, so when he became PM he was well ready for the job, which he carried out until he was knifed by his own side in 1991. Contrast Hawke with the current bloke, Albanese, who will likely be knifed by his own side sooner than 8 years.
The clocks went forward in NZ at the weekend, that must mean Australia is due a new PM shortly. Longevity isn’t their strongest attribute
Given the ACTU was almost as powerful as the federal government in that era, it isn’t a fair comparison.
Did you miss this bit?
Excellent point. And this applies across all parties. They also lack experience of life outside politics. Generally wanting in experience, judgement and leadership across the board.
Timing is almost everything. After two or three terms in office governments have annoyed enough people to have themselves punted from office because the electorate is willing to give the other mob, whose previous shortcomings are in the dim & distant, a seat on the government benches. The trick is to become leader of the opposition at about that time, not earlier when the government still has its gloss. No matter how good the opposition leader is, taking the reins as soon as you go into opposition is a poisoned chalice, unless the government is a total fiasco. When the time comes the opposition also has to look vaguely electable – not brave, not too confident, not Corbyn, just electable.
Oh, and should a government win one term too many, like Boris’s outfit, or Major’s, both of which were due for a spell in the back paddock, it’s London to a brick they’ll get smashed at the next election.
I’d say the current government has already lost its gloss if anyone believes it had it ever had one to begin with. It needs to be Kemi Badenoch as far as I’m concerned. She’ll come good.
Mr Cleverly. Sounds like Charles Dickens character. What might his character be?
Never mind Dickens. Read Trollope to get proper insights into political behaviour
This is one of the best analyses I’ve read on our problems for a while.
https://open.substack.com/pub/edwest/p/why-is-britain-poor?r=1fl6hp&utm_medium=ios
I also read that analysis and I have to disagree because it actually displayed a poor understanding of British economic history. Britain’s decline as an economic behemoth did not – as the analysis contended – start after WW2 (although it did accelerate then). It started way back in the late 19th c. – as soon in fact as better adapted nations (particularly USA, Germany and Japan) started to compete with it. The reasons are complex but none of the principal ones were flagged in that post. Principal reasons included:
1) the peculiar resilience of the British class system meant that manufacturing enterprise (‘trade’) was always looked down on and the 2nd generation of its great manufacturing dynasties got out of it as soon as possible. Hence Britain became a place brimful of lawyers and ‘what we would now call ‘creative & media people’ but woefully lacking in technologists and nuts and bolts engineers.
2) The Empire masked (and partly caused) Britain’s uncompetitiveness for many decades because it had a captive market for its lack-lustre products.
Excellent comments. The change in the class system to resisting technical education and trade is related to Dr Arnold of Rugby School taking the classics as the main apsect of the public school education. If he had followed the technical education of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich which trained engineering and artillery officers, the Royal Navy and East India Company College, we would have produced far more techically competent leaders.
If anyone in the Conservative Party thinks that there is a risk-free road back to power or that you can get there with a tweak here and tweak there, they are sadly mistaken.
The only person bold enough to give them a chance is Badenoch. If they had picked her instead of Truss in 2022, they Conservatives and the country would be in a much better position today than we find ourselves in.
A diminished membership of a ridiculed Party who did not keep its word and allowed the mad Left to gain no 10. In a country which is fed up with excessive immigration; an 80%+ white country? Joe Public of the Red Wall and High Streets various has seen ineffectual women politicians; doesn’t read Unherd, the Telegraph, Times, Spectator, Joe outnumbers those thousands to one, and Joe thinks a Nigerian is going to see off the new Sheriff of Nottingham? Really?
Dreamers.
It’s probably the end whichever they choose, an unproven novelty with no real track record vs a two faced nonentity, choice of three.
Spot on!
Utley was wrong about Thatcher. She fell for the poll tax in domestic affairs and the SEA in European affairs.
I think to be fair to Mrs Thatcher her idea of the Single Market was very different to what has evolved ie. she envisaged a market in which the different sovereign members of the EEC (as it then was, note) would recognise that their different regulatory regimes were good enough to be mutually accepted, without any need for centrally imposed movement towards uniformity of regulation across the EEC. That was naive, and we have had precisely the imposition of uniformity across what is now the EU which Mrs T would have instinctively opposed. Yes it has been a negotiated uniformity but that’s no mitigation eg. the UK was faced with the absurdity of having its insurance industry remodelled on German lines under the Solvency Directives.
Leadership requires having a vision, the ability to articulate that vision, the wisdom to surround oneself with others of like mind, and the balls to stick to it when confronting the inevitable obstacles.
The problems are evident, as much so in the UK as here in the US. Solutions, however, require work and commitment, the ability to necessarily say ‘no’ when needed, and treating other people’s money as if it were yours.
I was about to say that the Tory leadership candidates should all just PUT THAT THATCHER FANTASY DOWN AND BACK AWAY but then I remembered that I’ve been talking about MT in quite glowing terms recently.
Namely in connection with the US election: as a 1982 vintage, I consider myself lucky to have been born into a country lead by two women who deserved to be called leaders. I was 10 before I realised just how unusual that was and what Thatcher had achieved.
Say what you want about Merkel (I can talk at length about her shortcomings and mistakes), but she was a leader. There’s no doubt that she had a huge impact on the way German girls growing up during her tenure saw the world.
Little American girls can potentially look forward to growing up in a country led (if you can call it that) by…Kamala Harris. There is no comparison.
It would seem to me that the candidate they should most fear is Badenoch. She has them stymied on their preferred attack lines. Race, gender, migration, backstory. She can’t be portrayed as a racist, sexist toff from a public school background who’s never had a real job. She can therefore get on with delivering the conservative message without always having to cover off those attack lines.
… and she would also be the third female leader of the conservatives, the second ethnic minority leader when Labour haven’t had any. This is an attack line in itself. Just being there as an example of the difference.
Jenrick is not the one Labour fear; they are just hoping some will take that bluff. The one they really fear is Badenoch because she has brains, courage, can outdebate them every time, destroys the myths and lies of the BLM and woke nonsense, and is not a gammon. In a free vote of all Tory faithful Badenoch would win with a landslide.
Whoever takes over as leader of the Conservatives, their number one task is to instil discipline amongst the ranks. No bribes, freebies, nudge nudge wink winks. They have to stay squeaky clean. If they don’t the great Blob that they have allowed to happen will crucify them again.
Next will be the Great Repeal Act which will allow Parliament to reign supreme again and not the Supreme Court or the Leftist Lawyers.
I don’t envy their task but unless they do this they as a party are irrelevant
Real populism isn’t about government spending money, but about returning power to the people by removing politically created privileges (i.e. shrinking government and the role of politics). Thus real populism, far from being a fiscal burden, is fiscal liberation.
(Of course, the bureaucratic managerial technocratic class might not be happy with the loss of all those parasitic “jobs”).
A leader is judged on their judgement. William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister at 24 years of age.
div > p:nth-of-type(3) > a”>William Pitt the Younger – Wikipedia
div > p:nth-of-type(4) > a”>William Wilberforce said, “For personal purity, disinterestedness and love of this country, I have never known his equal.” div > p:nth-of-type(4) > a:nth-of-type(2)”>[1] Historian div > p:nth-of-type(4) > a:nth-of-type(3)”>Charles Petrie concludes that he was one of the greatest prime ministers “if on no other ground than that he enabled the country to pass from the old order to the new without any violent upheaval … He understood the new Britain.” div > p:nth-of-type(4) > a:nth-of-type(4)”>[2] For this he is div > p:nth-of-type(4) > a:nth-of-type(5)”>ranked highly amongst all British prime ministers in multiple surveys. div > p:nth-of-type(4) > a:nth-of-type(6)”>[3] div > p:nth-of-type(4) > a:nth-of-type(7)”>[4]
it’s Kemi or no one for me.
Ultimately it comes down to force of character & what you believe that character to be. And she is well aware that politics is the art of the possible, & you have to wade through oceans of crap to get things done (hence her advice to Rayner).
She’ll have to reform (Reform?) the Tories root & branch though before they’ll ever get my vote again.
this is a really useful piece of analysis – thank you.
I am not at all convinced that the Conservative Party can be rescued. It is too old and encumbered with soft leftism to have the foresight or vigour needed to lead the reformation on the right of U.K. politics that is now needed. I don’t see any of the current four leadership contenders attracting back the swathes of voters who turned to Reform. Following the wholly predictable failure of this Labour Administration over the coming five awful years, the Electorate will be looking for a strong and clear alternative devoid of woke, big government, net zero nonsense. A government prepared to let individuals get on with it – as opposed to frustrating their hopes and ambitions at every turn. A new leader will be needed to provide the catalyst for such a change. A second Thatcher. Let us hope that cometh the hour cometh the man or woman .