How much Thatcher is in Sunak?

London In fact, Mark Garnett is convinced that the Tory party is a misnomer for the British Conservatives. “A more appropriate name would be Thatcher Party,” says the political scientist from the University of Lancaster of the German Press Agency. “The former Prime Minister’s passion for a free-market economy, with low direct tax rates and minimal bureaucratic interference, is now mandatory for every aspiring Conservative politician.”

It will be ten years since Margaret Thatcher died on Saturday. But the “Iron Lady” still has considerable influence on the fortunes of her Tories.

A controversial economic policy bears her name, her handbag was considered a threat by many, and her sentence “I want my money back” is immortal: from 1979 to 1990, the politician was not only the first woman behind the famous black door with the number 10 in the Downing St. She was also the first woman to lead a European government and the longest-serving Prime Minister in recent British history.

With her political style known as “Thatcherism”, she caused either admiration or hatred and shaped an era in the 1980s. Garnett compares Thatcher’s legacy for Britain to that of ex-President Charles de Gaulle for France.

The daughter of a grocer’s was tough both internally and externally: she privatized large state-owned companies such as British Gas and Telecom, but also social housing, while at the same time cutting social benefits and shoring up the unions. The result was a massive social upheaval with violent protest actions.

Victory in the Falklands War kept Thatcher in office

Last but not least, Thatcher owed her success to her risky course in foreign policy. Victory in the Falklands War against Argentina in 1982 not only kept her in office, but also allowed the exhausted country to look to the future with optimism. Soon after her retirement as Prime Minister in 1990, Thatcher became a Baroness in the House of Lords.

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Thatcher is a legend in the remote Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Her bust looks proudly over the port of the capital Stanley, a local beer brand is called “Iron Lady”.

However, the statue in her hometown of Grantham, where Thatcher was born on October 13, 1925, has repeatedly been the victim of vandalism. Despite her successes, she was one of the most controversial figures in post-war British history.

Also because they opposed German reunification for a long time, called the ANC of South Africa’s former resistance fighter Nelson Mandela a “typical terrorist organization” and granted protection to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Today Thatcher’s Tories are in a real crisis. All polls are currently predicting a clear victory for the Social Democratic Labor Party in the elections planned for 2024. All the more the conservatives invoke the values ​​of “Thatcherism”.

Tories are still attached to the “Iron Lady”

When it was announced on Monday that Thatcher’s Treasury Secretary Nigel Lawson had died at the age of 91, Tory MP Simon Clarke quoted the former Chancellor of the Exchequer as saying: “One of the most important things the Thatcher government has done was to change the mood of the nation , to restore her confidence.” Almost pleadingly, Clarke emphasized, “The same challenge reverberates today, at a time marked by too much self-doubt.”

In the dispute over the successor to scandalous Prime Minister Boris Johnson last summer, the candidates went overboard with assurances that they were in the Thatcher tradition. Short-term Prime Minister Liz Truss, who during her time as Secretary of State was photographed several times in the same clothes and in the same places as Thatcher, was perhaps too precise. Her radical approach to tax cuts wreaked havoc on the market – Truss moved out of Downing Street in less than 50 days. But incumbent Rishi Sunak also emphasizes the proximity to the party role model.

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But devotion inhibits the party, as Tory expert Tim Bale tells the dpa. “There is perhaps too much Margaret Thatcher in the contemporary Conservative Party,” says the political scientist from London’s Queen Mary University. “She is such an icon that she acts as a tow anchor and makes it difficult for the party to shake off its obsession: low taxes and low spending, public investment bad and private good.” Such is Thatcher’s legacy, ten years after her death, both a blessing and a curse for the party.

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