The Tory contender Labour fears This is a crucial moment for both parties

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.

It is largely forgotten that when Thatcher replaced Ted Heath in 1975, she was also seen as a lightweight who would be Labour’s “secret weapon”. The former chancellor and her leadership rival, Reginald Maudling, described her victory as the “darkest day in the history of the Tory party”. And polls in 1978 suggested the Tories would enjoy a significant increase in support if it were to return the leadership to Heath. What actually won her power in 1979 was not her radicalism or iron will, but Labour’s total failure in government. “We lost the Election because people didn’t get their dustbins emptied, because commuters were angry about train disruption and because of too much union power,” James Callaghan argued, lamenting the Winter of Discontent which upended his premiership. Rishi Sunak could well say the same of his own time in government.

What won her the Conservative leadership in 1975, however, was her clarity of purpose and analysis of what had gone wrong. As the Spectator observed at the time, she was the only serious candidate who was clear that “Mr Heath’s leadership of the Conservative party has been a very bad one”. For the Spectator this was enough — everything else, the magazine contended, rested on this central analysis.

Something similar is required today. James Cleverly’s diagnosis that the party needs “unity” is insufficient given the scale of the Conservative failure between 2010 and 2024 — a period of government that was, inarguable, “very bad”. Cleverly’s focus on party unity is also insufficient given the scale of Britain’s wider social and economic failure over the past two decades, which has brought with it a sense of fatalism as public services have deteriorated along with the unquantifiable feel of the country.

Likewise, Theresa May’s machine-like incantation that “elections in the UK are won in the centre ground” simply ignores the obvious fact that she failed to win her election against the most Left-wing candidate in post-war British history, while Boris Johnson secured a majority of 80 against the same opponent. May’s analysis also ignores the even more obvious example of Margaret Thatcher, the most instinctively right wing Tory leader since 1945 and also the most successful. If there is such a thing as the centre ground in British politics, it is not how it is usually defined. Today, the centre ground combines full-fledged authoritarianism on most questions to do with criminal justice and immigration, a drain-the-swamp outrage at the political, economic and public sector establishment and a general sense of social democratic justice on issues of tax and spend.

Rather than cliches about the centre ground, like 1975 the first question is who today, of the Tory leaders, has the clear conviction that the past 14 years of Conservative rule have been “very bad”? And who offers the clearest answer as to why? From here we can begin to judge which one presents the greatest threat to Labour.

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. 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 — from reducing immigration and bogus asylum claims to improving economic growth and the performance of public services. This is the message Labour fears — but not the messenger. The words they used to describe him included “weird” and “extreme”. They also believe he reaches too quickly for old Thatcherite solutions to today’s problems. Jenrick has alighted on the systemic nature of Britain’s ills, but has yet to really embrace the new world to which Britain belongs — a world that requires more than reheated Thatcherism if Britain is to prosper. To those close to Starmer, Jenrick looks more like a second William Hague — or even Iain Duncan Smith — than a David Cameron, let alone a Margaret Thatcher.

By contrast, Tugendhat and Cleverly are seen as more effective messengers, but with ineffective messages. Tugendhat does not share Jenrick’s belief in the systemic failure of the British state — arguing that Britain has simply lost its dynamism because it has allowed itself to be run by the “rule of lawyers” rather than the rule of law. Cleverly, in contrast, says Britain just needs some of Ronald Reagan’s optimistic spirit. Neither troubles Labour — yet.

The candidate that Starmer’s team is least sure about is Badenoch. The size of her personality and willingness to speak her mind makes her a dangerous opponent. Her instinctive, confident conservatism also appears fresh in a way Jenrick’s does not. And yet she is also seen as potentially self-destructive in a way the others are not. She has the self-confidence of Thatcher, but does she have the discipline and political skill to navigate the challenges of opposition? After going on Times Radio to declare current rates of maternity pay “excessive” the question raised by T.E. Utley becomes pertinent once again: Is she willing to put aside her devotion to doctrine to avoid the plainly politically suicidal? If she wants to win, the answer must be yes.

What gives the Conservative Party hope is that even as its leading figures grapple with the question of what went wrong and why, the Labour party has yet to come up with its own response.

Keir Starmer’s most compelling diagnosis is that the period of Tory rule which ended earlier this year was marked, principally, by its “populism”. This, in his account, amounts to offering easy answers to the public instead of delivering hard truths, which is why the government ultimately lost control of the public finances. Every Tory leader, in Starmer’s telling, preferred populist slogans to real reform, the apotheosis of which was the Rwanda refugee scheme.

Yet, this is not a sufficient account of the past 14 years. Of all the criticisms that can be levelled at David Cameron and George Osborne, among the weakest is that they took easy decisions and were insufficiently concerned about spending constraints. The years of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, meanwhile, contain much of Starmer’s agenda today: from its faith in the green energy transition and infrastructure spending, to levelling up, taking back control and immigration restrictions. All featured in Starmer’s speech to the Labour party conference. It is incoherent to dismiss as populist a set of policies you intend to steal for yourself.

This failure of the current Government to nail down a diagnosis of Britain’s illness — and therefore also its cure — provides an opportunity for the Tories that they cannot afford to miss. The trouble is, none of the current candidates for the Tory leadership has yet come up with a good enough answer either.

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Tom McTague is UnHerd’s Political Editor. He is the author of Betting The House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.

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