On 28 September, on the eve of the 2024 Conservative Party Conference, it will be exactly eleven years since the funeral of Baroness Thatcher. The same time she spent in office as the longest serving Prime Minister of this country.
As her funeral procession moved towards St Paul’s Cathedral, I can remember a deft bit of TV commentary noting the inscription in Latin on a black marble plaque under the iconic dome, about the architect Sir Christopher Wren, but applied to “the Lady” in that moment: “If you seek his monument, look around you.”
Almost fifty years after Margaret Thatcher became Leader of the Opposition, four Conservative MPs, who were either unborn or toddlers when she did, will seek, at this year’s Conference, to progress their path to matching that achievement.
If successful there opens up the harder road towards an even bigger role that she, unquestionably, stamped her mark upon.
Conservatives cannot, and in my view should not, ignore the presence she still casts over the Party. Nor do I think they should see it as troubling, as we are told the current occupant of Downing Street found it when he had her portrait “moved”. It’s an act that betrays a certain lack of self-confidence.
Her presence beyond portraiture, both politically and historically can always be felt when the Conservative party enters the lists of another leadership contest. It’s not always voluble or overpowering, but it’s there just the same.
One senior Conservative, in waspish mood, acknowledged this to me last week: “are they Mrs T. is not quite the question. It’s whether that’s Thatcher or Truss!”
Two of the candidates have cited her as their inspiration to become Conservatives. None of them have sought to undermine her influence.
Would-be leaders want either to inherit her mantle or more accurately, carve their very own version, in an attempt to shine positively against her towering record of service and statesmanship in changing Britain. And, let’s admit it, to avoid her mistakes.
They quietly crave an “-ism” appended to their surname. One that encapsulates a vision and a clear purpose. One that doesn’t end in endless retrospective commentary asking what it actually was, once they finally leave the stage.
It’s not an ambition many have achieved. Which is, arguably, why the party is once again forced to seek another, to try again.
But the “children of Thatcher”, as this generation of leadership hopefuls are, should be smart about what of her legacy they are looking to match.
I noted in my piece last week that Thatcher was not considered a “proper Conservative” when she challenged the party’s orthodoxy of the 1970’s. Once she had, and, in office, remodelled the economy and society of this country, anything less than pure emulation was seen as diverging from “proper Conservatism”. Neither will work for today.
There is however in all the words from the original six leadership contenders a desire to offer that sense of mission – of a vision founded on firmly held beliefs and values. The Party is now judging who has that. What they seem to want is the the antidote to the complaint – that on the doorsteps in June they didn’t know what it was they were being asked to sell.
Now, it’s true, Thatcher confronted the problems of a Britain that is not the Britain of 2024. The world is so very different that a crude policy copy-and-paste wouldn’t work. However, as we go forward with this contest, I have one or two threads from her era that should play to all of the contenders’ ambitions.
Clear values and the simple explanation of a wider vision for the future would be just the sort of emulation that’s worth the effort.
The legacy of radical but deliverable solutions to deep set problems, should be a a necessary aim in any policy debates ahead. There seems no mood in the party for ‘tinkering at the edges’.
There is always the maintenance of the UK’s position on the world stage which Labour have suggested, quite incorrectly, needs “repair”. I’ve seen for myself, right at the sharp end, how misleading that critique was but I also know keeping strong bonds with our allies, and carrying the weight to be strong with those who are not, takes work.
These are general themes, of course, so here’s one area that’s more specific:
If you’ve heard the six interviews we published at the beginning of the week, one of the biggest themes was how to bring younger people to the Conservative movement and address the stark reality that many of them, for whom Thatcher is a distant historic figure, do not think today’s Conservatives are on their side, or even care about them.
One way of reversing that view would be revisit, amplify and certainly simplify the realisation of that Thatcherite concept of owning your own home.
Oh, and this time, really mean it: selling houses, by virtue of instilling the pride of caring for, and moulding a “place of your own” – providing an asset that can grant individual financial security – and securing that bubble within which to build the bonds of family – and making that dream real for a generation who have seen it as so far out of reach they almost feel taunted by those who have achieved it.
The founder of this site, Tim Montgomerie, recently reminded me of importance of the last part of its name, ConservativeHome. A vision for Conservative homes, and lots of them, is a good one. However, the party has many times promised this and the sad fact is – we haven’t properly delivered.
The Prime Minister claimed at PMQs on Wednesday that Labour would be the party to deliver this. They too have promised much before and fallen short.
We can’t afford to, again. This time the Party has make it happen.
And the challenge is real. As my colleague Henry Hill pointed out to me, not only is the idea of owning your own home worryingly distant, but actually finding a home of your own, owned or otherwise, is also distant for far too many of Thatcher’s grandchildren.
So, a new leader would be wise to make it a reality for a generation who don’t yet see Conservatives as their allies, and simultaneously grab a bit of the Thatcher legacy to boot, by reminding people of her words in 1977:
“Let me give you my vision: A man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master. These are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free country, and on that freedom all of our other freedoms depend”.