There have been a lot of parallels drawn between today’s political climate and that of the 1970s.
A tired Conservative government has departed from office and made way for a Labour administration with an appetite for giving the trade unions what they want. Unrest internationally. Perennially sluggish growth. And a newly elected leader of a Conservative opposition, ready to take on the establishment consensus, rewire the state and renew the right.
You can forgive the excitable whispers (and outright commentary) in Westminster drawing parallels between then and now, and between Badenoch and Thatcher. It isn’t just the party loyalists, either. In think tank world, where I now reside, many are making similar points. In the 1970s the IEA, CPS, ASI and others played a huge and vital role in providing Thatcher and her allies with the intellectual basis on which her conservative revolution was built. Mention free market think tanks to Westminster-dwellers today, and someone will quickly point out the opportunity for them to play that role again.
Thatcher is the most influential – and successful – Conservative leader and post-war Prime Minister we have had.
She tackled the malaise of the 1970s head on, revolutionised how the state functioned, bared down on inflation, unlocked the private sector and delivered prosperity back to Britain. Her remedy for our national decline: fiscal discipline; monetary control; privatisation and (eventually) lower taxes was just what the doctor ordered.
But we know that history rhymes more than it repeats.
The Conservative Party must not assume that it can just replay the Thatcher-era hits and wait for the votes to roll in. As my boss Tom Clougherty puts it, singing ‘Thatcher Karaoke’ won’t do. Though the first album was a classic, a second album that seeks purely to imitate the first never quite lands.
Thatcher was so successful simply because she addressed the problems in front of her. She saw the issues facing the country and, with the help of others, set out her plan to fix those problems. Then she followed through on it.
The problems facing our country now are different to those we were facing in the late twentieth century. The British state is unrecognisable to the one Thatcher inherited. The domestic and global economy has fundamentally changed, and the geopolitical picture is vastly different.
So what are the problems we face today? They aren’t few. Economic growth requires the most attention. Our shocking growth rates are well documented, and Starmer has identified it as a key priority. But it remains to be seen whether that will translate into the necessary action to address it.
Relatedly, it is almost impossible to build anything in modern Britain.
Just look at the farce over the £100m bat cave slowing down HS2 for the latest example. Houses, infrastructure, energy, offices – it has become far too difficult to create the capacity in the economy that we desperately need. Again, the Prime Minister is making the right noises on this. But there is a difference between operating within the failed system with fighting talk, and fixing the system properly.
Another is the demographic time bomb that we are sitting on. An ageing population, people spending longer than ever in retirement, with an already giant welfare and pensions bill and no real path or appetite to put downward pressure on either.
If it hopes to have any chance of returning to power, Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party will need to provide convincing answers to these challenges and many others.
So far Badenoch has been very clear that she will not be developing policy too quickly. Instead, she is taking a principles-first approach. While it would be wrong to attempt a pale imitation of Thatcherism in order fix a different set of problems, Kemi and her team should learn from Thatcher’s legacy when determining which principles are to be the guiding lights of her Conservative Party. She should put economic freedom front and centre.
We know that economic freedom drives growth, lifts people out of poverty, and delivers prosperity like no other force. Over the past fourteen years the Conservative government has paid lip service to it. At best this lip service transformed into a few wins. But at worst, and arguably more regularly, it masked an altogether opposite attitude that actively damaged our economy. ‘I believe in the free market, but…’ and ‘we know we need to build more, but…’ were words too regularly uttered by Conservative Ministers.
In her recent speech to the IDU, Badenoch made lots of positive noise about the value of liberty in improving the world. She set out a vision of “muscular liberalism”, that involves explaining the value of liberty and stopping the expansion of the state. Sounds good to me, but we need more than talk, as Badenoch herself has acknowledged.
Any successful party of the centre-right must not just believe in economic freedom, it must make it its defining cause, because everything else can and will follow from it. Boosting growth, improving our resilience to demographic changes, creating opportunity, raising wages, solving the housing crisis, improving our energy supply and more can all be done if markets are embraced.
And when Badenoch and her team are ready to start thinking about more detailed policy, the IEA, and every other think tank, will be ready and waiting. The second album should not be a weak imitation of the first, but it shouldn’t shy away from sticking to the themes that work.
There have been a lot of parallels drawn between today’s political climate and that of the 1970s.
A tired Conservative government has departed from office and made way for a Labour administration with an appetite for giving the trade unions what they want. Unrest internationally. Perennially sluggish growth. And a newly elected leader of a Conservative opposition, ready to take on the establishment consensus, rewire the state and renew the right.
You can forgive the excitable whispers (and outright commentary) in Westminster drawing parallels between then and now, and between Badenoch and Thatcher. It isn’t just the party loyalists, either. In think tank world, where I now reside, many are making similar points. In the 1970s the IEA, CPS, ASI and others played a huge and vital role in providing Thatcher and her allies with the intellectual basis on which her conservative revolution was built. Mention free market think tanks to Westminster-dwellers today, and someone will quickly point out the opportunity for them to play that role again.
Thatcher is the most influential – and successful – Conservative leader and post-war Prime Minister we have had.
She tackled the malaise of the 1970s head on, revolutionised how the state functioned, bared down on inflation, unlocked the private sector and delivered prosperity back to Britain. Her remedy for our national decline: fiscal discipline; monetary control; privatisation and (eventually) lower taxes was just what the doctor ordered.
But we know that history rhymes more than it repeats.
The Conservative Party must not assume that it can just replay the Thatcher-era hits and wait for the votes to roll in. As my boss Tom Clougherty puts it, singing ‘Thatcher Karaoke’ won’t do. Though the first album was a classic, a second album that seeks purely to imitate the first never quite lands.
Thatcher was so successful simply because she addressed the problems in front of her. She saw the issues facing the country and, with the help of others, set out her plan to fix those problems. Then she followed through on it.
The problems facing our country now are different to those we were facing in the late twentieth century. The British state is unrecognisable to the one Thatcher inherited. The domestic and global economy has fundamentally changed, and the geopolitical picture is vastly different.
So what are the problems we face today? They aren’t few. Economic growth requires the most attention. Our shocking growth rates are well documented, and Starmer has identified it as a key priority. But it remains to be seen whether that will translate into the necessary action to address it.
Relatedly, it is almost impossible to build anything in modern Britain.
Just look at the farce over the £100m bat cave slowing down HS2 for the latest example. Houses, infrastructure, energy, offices – it has become far too difficult to create the capacity in the economy that we desperately need. Again, the Prime Minister is making the right noises on this. But there is a difference between operating within the failed system with fighting talk, and fixing the system properly.
Another is the demographic time bomb that we are sitting on. An ageing population, people spending longer than ever in retirement, with an already giant welfare and pensions bill and no real path or appetite to put downward pressure on either.
If it hopes to have any chance of returning to power, Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party will need to provide convincing answers to these challenges and many others.
So far Badenoch has been very clear that she will not be developing policy too quickly. Instead, she is taking a principles-first approach. While it would be wrong to attempt a pale imitation of Thatcherism in order fix a different set of problems, Kemi and her team should learn from Thatcher’s legacy when determining which principles are to be the guiding lights of her Conservative Party. She should put economic freedom front and centre.
We know that economic freedom drives growth, lifts people out of poverty, and delivers prosperity like no other force. Over the past fourteen years the Conservative government has paid lip service to it. At best this lip service transformed into a few wins. But at worst, and arguably more regularly, it masked an altogether opposite attitude that actively damaged our economy. ‘I believe in the free market, but…’ and ‘we know we need to build more, but…’ were words too regularly uttered by Conservative Ministers.
In her recent speech to the IDU, Badenoch made lots of positive noise about the value of liberty in improving the world. She set out a vision of “muscular liberalism”, that involves explaining the value of liberty and stopping the expansion of the state. Sounds good to me, but we need more than talk, as Badenoch herself has acknowledged.
Any successful party of the centre-right must not just believe in economic freedom, it must make it its defining cause, because everything else can and will follow from it. Boosting growth, improving our resilience to demographic changes, creating opportunity, raising wages, solving the housing crisis, improving our energy supply and more can all be done if markets are embraced.
And when Badenoch and her team are ready to start thinking about more detailed policy, the IEA, and every other think tank, will be ready and waiting. The second album should not be a weak imitation of the first, but it shouldn’t shy away from sticking to the themes that work.