Mani Basharzad is a Junior Research Associate at the Institute of Economic Affairs and an economic journalist
There is perhaps no quote by Margaret Thatcher that has been attacked more often than her remark that “there is no such thing as society.” Keir Starmer claimed in a speech in 2024 that “one Conservative Prime Minister said there was ‘no such thing as society’. And then we watched individualism run rampant.” I remember studying a university module called Economics of Social Change. The first slide of one tutorial displayed a picture of the Iron Lady alongside that famous quote, and the lecturer asked who agreed with it.
I still remember the look of surprise when I was the only person in the room to raise my hand.
But there is something deeper at stake than the Left’s narrow attack on what Thatcher said. Roger Scruton believed that her critics had interpreted the quote in precisely the opposite way from what she intended. As Scruton wrote: “She meant that there is such a thing as society, but that society is not identical with the state. Society is composed of people, freely associating, and forming communities of interest that socialists have no right to control, and no authority to subject to their obsessions.” The state is not society, and it is more important than ever to remember that lesson today.
There is now a growing debate about whether Britain is broken. Fraser Nelson and Zia Yusuf debated the question at the Institute of Economic Affairs last week. Nigel Farage repeatedly declares that “Britain is broken”. After his defection, Robert Jenrick wrote that Britain is broken and that only a “revolution” can fix it. What Reform fails to understand is that Britain is not broken; the government is.
Confusing the two is a profound mistake. When the distinction becomes blurred, the state comes to be seen as society itself. Once there is no meaningful difference between government and society, conservatives risk becoming what they claim to oppose: Rousseauian revolutionaries who believe that the will of the people should know no limits. That is why the slogan “Britain is broken” is not a conservative one.
Kemi Badenoch was right when she argued that Britain is not broken and that “some things in Britain are broken, but they are not broken beyond repair.” Once you erase the distinction between state and society, you unconsciously dismiss all the institutions that exist independently of government, the very institutions that conservatism exists to defend: families, markets, neighbourhoods, voluntary associations, and civil society
Reform wants to replace the Conservatives, but statements like Jenrick’s reveal how limited its understanding of conservatism can be. When someone says that only a revolution can fix Britain, there is nothing particularly conservative about it.
Yet conservatism should not be reduced to optimism alone. Optimism matters. In many ways, what makes us conservatives is our shared love: love of country, love of institutions, and love of our fellow citizens. But loving something also means being honest about its flaws. And one thing that is undeniably broken in Britain today is the government.
The Milburn Report found that there are now more than one million young people in Britain who are not in education, employment, or training. At the same time, competition for jobs has intensified dramatically, with graduate vacancies attracting enormous numbers of applicants. Young people want to work. The problem is that government policy is making job creation harder through higher taxes, heavier regulation, and the growing burden of financing an ever-expanding welfare state. Again, this is a story of government failure, not societal failure.
What Britain needs is a smaller state. History teaches us that a government that tries to do everything ultimately does nothing particularly well. We have become accustomed to a society in which government intrudes into almost every aspect of life. Yet, as Alexis de Tocqueville warned, when the state replaces community, freedom is gradually eroded
If we want government to work better, we must ask it to do less. Making the state more efficient is not enough; we must also reduce the range of responsibilities it assumes. A genuinely broken country is one that has lost the capacity to govern itself through families, communities, markets, and voluntary institutions, relying instead on the state for every solution.
Mani Basharzad is a Junior Research Associate at the Institute of Economic Affairs and an economic journalist
There is perhaps no quote by Margaret Thatcher that has been attacked more often than her remark that “there is no such thing as society.” Keir Starmer claimed in a speech in 2024 that “one Conservative Prime Minister said there was ‘no such thing as society’. And then we watched individualism run rampant.” I remember studying a university module called Economics of Social Change. The first slide of one tutorial displayed a picture of the Iron Lady alongside that famous quote, and the lecturer asked who agreed with it.
I still remember the look of surprise when I was the only person in the room to raise my hand.
But there is something deeper at stake than the Left’s narrow attack on what Thatcher said. Roger Scruton believed that her critics had interpreted the quote in precisely the opposite way from what she intended. As Scruton wrote: “She meant that there is such a thing as society, but that society is not identical with the state. Society is composed of people, freely associating, and forming communities of interest that socialists have no right to control, and no authority to subject to their obsessions.” The state is not society, and it is more important than ever to remember that lesson today.
There is now a growing debate about whether Britain is broken. Fraser Nelson and Zia Yusuf debated the question at the Institute of Economic Affairs last week. Nigel Farage repeatedly declares that “Britain is broken”. After his defection, Robert Jenrick wrote that Britain is broken and that only a “revolution” can fix it. What Reform fails to understand is that Britain is not broken; the government is.
Confusing the two is a profound mistake. When the distinction becomes blurred, the state comes to be seen as society itself. Once there is no meaningful difference between government and society, conservatives risk becoming what they claim to oppose: Rousseauian revolutionaries who believe that the will of the people should know no limits. That is why the slogan “Britain is broken” is not a conservative one.
Kemi Badenoch was right when she argued that Britain is not broken and that “some things in Britain are broken, but they are not broken beyond repair.” Once you erase the distinction between state and society, you unconsciously dismiss all the institutions that exist independently of government, the very institutions that conservatism exists to defend: families, markets, neighbourhoods, voluntary associations, and civil society
Reform wants to replace the Conservatives, but statements like Jenrick’s reveal how limited its understanding of conservatism can be. When someone says that only a revolution can fix Britain, there is nothing particularly conservative about it.
Yet conservatism should not be reduced to optimism alone. Optimism matters. In many ways, what makes us conservatives is our shared love: love of country, love of institutions, and love of our fellow citizens. But loving something also means being honest about its flaws. And one thing that is undeniably broken in Britain today is the government.
The Milburn Report found that there are now more than one million young people in Britain who are not in education, employment, or training. At the same time, competition for jobs has intensified dramatically, with graduate vacancies attracting enormous numbers of applicants. Young people want to work. The problem is that government policy is making job creation harder through higher taxes, heavier regulation, and the growing burden of financing an ever-expanding welfare state. Again, this is a story of government failure, not societal failure.
What Britain needs is a smaller state. History teaches us that a government that tries to do everything ultimately does nothing particularly well. We have become accustomed to a society in which government intrudes into almost every aspect of life. Yet, as Alexis de Tocqueville warned, when the state replaces community, freedom is gradually eroded
If we want government to work better, we must ask it to do less. Making the state more efficient is not enough; we must also reduce the range of responsibilities it assumes. A genuinely broken country is one that has lost the capacity to govern itself through families, communities, markets, and voluntary institutions, relying instead on the state for every solution.