What drives the appeal and nostalgia of Margaret Thatcher within UK Conservative Party?

Question

In light of the ongoing UK Conservative leadership race, a lot has been said about the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

In particular, one of the candidates Liz Truss often invokes the image of Thatcher to appeal to party members. This suggests that Thatcherism remains an influencial school of thinking within the UK Conservatives, potentially enough to propel the next Prime Minister into office.

I'm really struck by how UK Conservatives keep looping back to that particular period throughout the premiership of Cameron, May, and Johnson. It seems to suggest that whatever came after Thatcher was somehow failing to tap into the zeitgeist of UK Conservatives, so much so that they are still talking about her after Brexit.

It's not clear to me what exactly is driving the appeal and nostalgia of Thatcherism within UK Conservatives. Can someone explain it in a way that is understandable to people who may not be particularly enthusiastic about Thatcher's policies?

Answer 1

Success! Margaret Thatcher was exceptionally successful, winning 3 General Elections with large majorities, and perhaps more importantly, never losing a general election. Partisans love a winner.

Conviction politics. Margaret Thatcher was not a "let's try to keep everyone happy" politician. She broke the post-war consensus, established the political identity of the modern Conservative party. Partisans love strong opinions.

Generational timing. The current crop of leadership contenders, and many party members, would have been in their teens or at university while Thatcher was PM. At that time when they were forming political opinions, she was the leader.

Answer 2

While success at the ballot box is definitely a factor, my personal experience from speaking to Conservative party members, as well as a couple of MPs, is that Thatcher's legacy is remembered with such fondness by a large proportion of the party because of her transformation of the country's fortunes after the 'dark days' of the 70s. I think it's necessary to go into a bit more detail with regards the state of the country before Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister to fully explain the feeling of nostalgia felt, especially by older members who personally remember her premiership.

James K mentions her breaking of the post-war consensus - in brief, the idea that everyone in the labour force should have full employment, unions should be empowered, the state should own and run the utilities & other national organisations such as the railways and British Airways, an expanded welfare state, and so on. This had been in place since 1945, and had had a lot of success - the establishment of the National Health Service, low unemployment, wage rises. It lead to massive increases in quality of life, but these came at a cost.

The consensus had its downsides. The powerful unions were able to prevent modernisation and mechanisation, and industry profits were not balanced between wage rises and investment, which led to ever-increasing inefficiency. Industries, particularly the coal industry, were only kept afloat by massive state subsidies. As the 1970s rolled around, things began to come to a head. Money started getting low. The inflation rate, already high in 1970 at around 6%, peaked in 1975 at over 24%. The top rate of tax was at 90%, investment was not rewarded and there was a brain drain to America and elsewhere. The UK was known as the 'sick man of Europe' for much of the 60s and 70s. Unions began to strike, particularly the mining and railway unions, leading to the introduction of the three-day week by Conservative PM Edward Heath.

Heath called an election in 1974 to try and consolidate power and receive a mandate to deal with the unions, but was unsuccessful and Labour's Callaghan took over as Prime Minister. Callaghan tried to keep pay increases for affected sectors at 5%, but swiftly had to abandon this in the face of pressure from the unions. When the government could no longer afford to pay, it had to go cap in hand to the IMF for a bailout like some tinpot dictatorship. The winter of 1978-79 was known as the Winter of Discontent. Strikes took place across practically all public industries, refuse collectors left rubbish strewn in the streets, corpses remained unburied due to gravedigger strikes, power-cuts were common.

When Thatcher came to power in May 1979, she began to raise interest rates and focused on indirect taxation such as VAT, rather than direct taxation through income tax to encourage investment and tackle inflation. In the short-term, inflation increased, but within a few years this fiscal policy resulted in inflation receeding to manageable levels. She tackled the unions which had held the country to ransom in the 70s by refusing to increase subsidies, leading famously to the miner's strike in 1984-85. The dominance of the unions was eroded through the privatisation of vast amounts of nationalised industry, which decimated certain areas of the country, particularly coal mining areas in the North.

Many Conservative party members argue that the ends justified the means - Britain was transformed from a nation which could barely make ends meet, plagued by power cuts, low productivity, and skyrocketing inflation. The Conservative party membership tends to be older, around the mid 50s, and predominantly lives in the south of the country, which explains the lack of generational mistrust experienced by those in the north.

Other factors affecting the rose-tinted spectacles include a certain amount of jingoism relating to her response to the Falklands War, as well as the Housing Act 1980 which gave council house tenants the right to buy their social housing. This had the effect of allowing an entire generation of those less-well-off to get onto the housing ladder, while reducing the stock of council houses for future generations. Many Conservative party members are of the age that they or their parents benefitted personally from this policy.

Answer 3

I'm not sure it's nostalgia for Mrs Thatcher rather than distaste for the current UK Conservative "leadership".

Someone pointed out that those in their middle years now were young during the Thatcher years and their life viewpoints were largely formed then - against a backdrop of a determined woman dealing with ridiculously overpowered unions, overpaid workers, gross inefficiencies throughout industry and the public services and strikes at the drop of a hat.

That may be a valid viewpoint for some. But I don't think that most people have allowed their political mindset to be crystallized by the 1980s zeitgeist. Blair was in power just as long as Thatcher and little in UK domestic life bears his stamp today. His legacy was tainted by the Second Iraq War and the humbug about WMD.

To me nostalgia for life as it was under Thatcher rests on two factors:

1. A much simpler world - no China superpower, a USSR on its honkers and screaming for a decent way back, no global warming, no strict regulation on financial markets, no mass migration of economic refugees from poor states and no prospect of mass unemployment in a few short years due to software technology.

2. Nostalgia itself - the longing for a warmer, securer and more predictable place - as we all feel it once into our middle years.

Answer 4

She had such a large majority she was able to attack the common assets of the country and sell them all off, and the opposition could do nothing but complain. When she came into power the country had a national mining industry, steel industry, car industry, we owned our own water, electricity, gas supply, telecomms, trains, buses, and public housing. She basically closed down most of our common assets we had built up since the second world war, and gave it cheap to her mates who all got rich. That made her very popular with the people who made money out of it. This ensured the press barons painted a rosy picture of her forever, and no one is allowed to point out she robbed the country blind. Tory voters tend to believe things in certain newspapers.