Remembering Ronald Reagan, Henry Olsen – author of a new book on the former president’s philosophy – struck a similar note. While Mrs Thatcher’s transatlantic soulmate during the 1980s wanted to advance economic freedom and did, he repeatedly talked of social obligations, too – but is overwhelmingly remembered for the former rather than the latter. This is unfortunate because he worked with Democrats across the political aisle to build a consensus on key entitlement programmes and had, on occasion, to fight fellow conservatives who disagreed with his support for the tax rises necessary to sustain those programmes.

In the fourth clip of this interview, to be published tomorrow, the two authors will discuss the gaps in the thinking of Thatcher and Reagan – especially in terms of relevance to the challenges of globalisation that we face today.

For all clips in the series click here.

Buy a copy of Charles Moore’s book(s) via this link and Henry’s “The Working Class Republican” via this one. Other booksellers are available!

Today, the two biographers talk about how both reached out to poorer Britons and Americans. Thatcher won the support of fabled “Essex man” and there were “Reagan Democrats” in the USA. Every successful conservative leader of modern times has depended on such outreach for their majorities – John Howard had his “battlers” for example and Stephen Harper his “Tim Hortons voters”.

In remarks that are very relevant to today, Charles Moore explains that Mrs Thatcher was as interested in spreading ownership (and, therefore, wealth) as well as income. Sadly, because her government and subsequent governments did not build enough new houses the great rise in home ownership that she engineered with her flagship council homes policy has been completely reversed when measured as a percentage of the British population.

In the third clip of the interview, to be published tomorrow, the two authors will discuss how the modern day disciples of Thatcher and Reagan misremember their heroes.

Buy a copy of Charles Moore’s book(s) via this link and Henry’s “The Working Class Republican” via this one. Other booksellers are available!

If Tories and Republicans are to look to these two leaders from the 1980s it’s probably useful for them to be properly understood. Unfortunately, I’ve long believed many Right-wingers misremember Thatcher and Reagan, almost as much as those on the Left do. In particular, they remember the times when they were boldly ideological – against the “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union or in tackling striking air traffic controllers or coalminers. They forget how they declined to cut welfare or health provision in any significant ways and the times they occasionally raised taxes. Reagan would not be on the ‘right’ side of the tax pledge introduced by Grover Norquist and which helps explain why no Washington Republican has a voted for any tax increase since 1990.

Over the next six days, therefore, we’ll be running clips from an interview UnHerd conducted with Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph columnist and official biographer of Margaret Thatcher and Henry Olsen, Editor of our Flyover country theme and who, last year, published a new book on Reagan that attempted to argue that he was not the economic libertarian that some claim he was.

We begin with Charles Moore explaining what Mrs Thatcher meant by her controversial “there is no such thing as society” quote and Henry Olsen putting Reagan’s “government is the problem, not the solution” in context. And, wow, what a context. Reagan added, critically, “in this present crisis” to those words and the rest of his first inaugural included important promises to safeguard a wide range of government provisions. He was, as Henry’s book contends, a “New Deal” Republican – preferring to save rather than dismantle the systems of social protection that were often built by Democratic Party opponents.

In the second clip of this series, to be published tomorrow, the two authors will discuss how Thatcher and Reagan reached out to low income workers.

Buy a copy of Charles Moore’s book(s) via this link and Henry’s “The Working Class Republican” via this one. Other booksellers are available!

Additionally, the video below providers a three minute summary of the key arguments in Henry’s book.