The Iron Lady had many qualities, but she sowed the seeds of a society she would have hated
Few British politicians have been as divisive as Margaret Thatcher. Whilst many a Prime Minister has provoked widespread contempt by the end of their tenure, Thatcher is unique in the love and loathing that she commands, even 25 years after leaving power, and a century on from her birth.
For a politician that set Britain hurtling into a new age, Thatcher was a leader oddly out of step with her contemporaries. Though famously and resolutely opposed to the old world of paternalistic Tory “wets”, she cuts a very old-fashioned figure compared to the socially liberal, largely secular free marketeers who would come to be the standard bearers of Thatcherism. As a champion of “Victorian values”, her small state philosophy was profoundly moralistic, grounded in her devout Methodist background. Thatcher frequently made reference to mutual aid, friendly societies, and charitable schools and hospitals in her vision of the good society, one undergirded by “honesty and thrift and reliability and hard work and a sense of responsibility for your fellow men”.
This distinctively retro view resonated with many ordinary people, but it did not suit the changing tastes of the British establishment. In the Churches of England and Scotland, the clergy were embracing the welfare state, and seeking to baptise state support in the name of the “social gospel”. At the same time, secular society was becoming more permissive and more comfortable with consumerism, materialism and celebrity. For many in Thatcher’s own movement and support base, the appeal of her libertarian ideas about the state was not the chance to reignite Victorian philanthropy, but rather the opportunity to indulge their ambitions and appetites freed from the shackles of an old-fashioned society.
Looking back on Thatcher today, it is impossible not to regard her as a tragic figure in the most classic sense of the term. Tragic heroes are tragic not because they are bad, but because they are great and virtuous men and women whose merits are undermined by a fatal flaw. Thatcher is without doubt the greatest British post war leader; one whose brilliant rhetoric was matched by a strength of character entirely unique in an age of weak, managerial politicians. Her driving instinct that the British establishment was rotten, that the unions were a retrograde force, and that the British economy had become sclerotic were all entirely correct. Yet this historic, visionary politician had hitched her star to the economic orthodoxies of Friendman and Hayek, and navigated the ship of state by the treacherous beacon of Mont Pelerin.
The great economic liberalisation that Thatcher unleashed has led to a social and cultural liberalisation that would have horrified her
The successes of Thatcher’s time in office shouldn’t be ignored or understated. Industrial conflict was largely brought to an end. Her government achieved a budgetary surplus for the first time since the 1960s, the debt to GDP ratio fell, and the economy grew at a healthy rate. Yet despite these achievements, the desperate irony of Thatcher’s time in office is that she sowed the seeds for a Britain that was the antithesis of the one she cherished and believed in.
Moral and religious language has drained out of British politics, even as the intellectual level of rhetoric has plummeted. To go back and read or hear Thatcher today is startling: there is clarity, purpose, intelligence, wit and faith crackling from every word. To put her alongside any modern politician is shaming — the length of the fall is difficult to calculate or imagine. It would be easy to blame Thatcher for social and institutional changes already well under way before she took office, or mistakes made by her successors. Yet her part in a shared tragedy is impossible to evade. The dogmatisms she imparted to politicians across the ideological spectrum about the impossibility of intervening in markets, or the infallibility of private enterprise have proved treacherous delusions that have stood in the way of renewal and reform.
Thatcher’s hopeful vision of a property-owning democracy, founded on Christian faith and strong families acting as a “nursery of civic virtue” was not realisable by travelling the road of free market capitalism. Wealth and income inequality rose continuously during and following the Thatcherite revolution. The state stopped building homes, but the market didn’t start building any more. Public utilities were sold off, with the tragicomic spectacle of the “Tell Sid” campaign in which ordinary members of the public would become shareholders — but private ownership has led to under-investment and increased prices over the long term. Rather than a great expansion of private wealth in the hands of ordinary people, financial deregulation saw private debt explode. Though homeownership increased in the short term due to Right to Buy and a liberalised mortgage market, these policies subsidised demand and restricted supply. The result has been a massive speculative bubble in house prices, and a two-tier society in which the young and poor are locked out of savings, investment and homeownership.
The great economic liberalisation that Thatcher unleashed has led to a social and cultural liberalisation that would have horrified her. Popular culture has become crass, consumeristic and hyper-sexualised. British politicians sat by complacently as screens and smartphones wrecked the mental health of a generation, in no small part because of the unthinking faith in markets and technology that Thatcher and her Blairite successors inculcated. Willingness to fight for your country, go to church or volunteer in the community has declined. Friendships and romances are formed at ever lower rates. In their place, a parasocial world of social media, influencers and celebrities have rushed in to rot the mind of a nation.
Under Thatcher Britain rushed from one extreme — a failed model of state ownership and central control — to the other: a complacent, passive economy built on speculation, rent-seeking and unsustainable consumption. Comparable European countries like Germany, France and Spain, despite their problems, have hung on to their industrial base, maintained higher productivity, protected strategic assets, built public infrastructure and kept energy costs low, by pursuing a middle path between state intervention and private investment. In response to the colossal problems that have emerged from the 1980s, Conservatives today can only preach more of the same: we need to deregulate planning laws, cut taxes and cut spending. We have the right medicine, we just need a higher dosage.
Perhaps only a leader like Thatcher herself — iconoclastic, driven, charismatic and principled — can rescue us from the deadly trap into which she led us. But anyone scanning the horizon for such a visionary may be waiting some time.
