Maggie’s legacy: Divisive Thatcher looms over UK Tory race – Macau Daily Times

Britains Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher waves to the media on returning to No. 10 Downing Street from Buckingham Palace, in London, May 11, 1980

Two people are running to be Britains next prime minister, but a third presence looms over the contest: Margaret Thatcher.

The late former prime minister dominated Britain in the 1980s, and has left a large and contested legacy. Critics see her as an intransigent ideologue whose free-market policies frayed social bonds and gutted the countrys industrial communities. But for the governing Conservative Party, Thatcher is an icon, an inspiration and the presiding spirit who made Britain fit for the modern era.

In the race to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and prime minister, both Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak claim to embody the values of Thatcher, who died in 2013 at 87.

Asked who was Britains greatest prime minister? Both candidates unhesitatingly say Thatcher. Sunak made a key speech in the late leaders hometown of Grantham, declaring himself a proponent of common-sense Thatcherism, while his wife and children took selfies in front of the Iron Ladys bronze statue.

Truss talks about her own modest origins, inviting comparisons to grocers daughter Thatcher, and adopts poses and outfits bold blue dresses, pussy-bow blouses that echo the distinctive style of Britains first female prime minister.

Historian Richard Vinen of Kings College London says Truss is an Instagram Thatcher.

Victoria Honeyman, associate professor of British politics at the University of Leeds, says Thatcher is a talisman for Conservatives. Robert Saunders, a historian of modern Britain at Queen Mary University of London, believes she has become a creature of myth.

Like Thors hammer, Thatchers handbag can bestow godlike powers on those deemed worthy to lift it, Saunders wrote on the Unherd website.

In one sense, the Thatcher fixation is easily explained. She led the Conservatives to three successive election victories and was never defeated at the ballot box. She was eventually brought down like Johnson by her own party, ousted in 1990 after 11 years in power.

Every Conservative leader since Margaret Thatcher has failed, said Vinen, author of the book Thatchers Britain.

John Major lost the party power in 1997, and the three leaders after him kept the Tories in opposition. Prime Minister David Cameron gambled on a 2016 referendum that, against his wishes, took Britain out of the European Union. His successor Theresa May was defeated by Brexit infighting, and Johnson has been given the boot by Conservative lawmakers after months of ethics scandals.

Thatchers decade in power, through war and peace, boom and bust, also offers rich pickings for acolytes to choose from. She was a wartime leader who defeated Argentina over the Falkland Islands, a democrat who stood up to the Soviet Union and saw the Cold War end, a union-bashing capitalist who unleashed the power of the financial markets.

You can basically cherry-pick what you want, Honeyman said.

That selective memory is at work when todays Conservatives, who are overwhelmingly pro-Brexit, say Thatcher would have supported the decision to leave the EU. Vinen says its almost sacrilegious to point it out, but Thatcher was actually pro-European for most of her time in office.

Thatchers economic legacy is also contested. Truss and Sunak both claim to be offering Thatcherite economics, but their policies are very different. Truss says she will boost borrowing and cut taxes immediately to ease Britains cost-of-living crisis, while Sunak says its vital to get the countrys soaring inflation rate under control first.

Both can point to decisions Thatcher made in support of their stances, although Vinen thinks Sunaks inflation-busting focus is closer to Thatcher economically.

She (didnt) believe that you can lower tax unless you cut spending, he said.

Britains new leader will be elected by about 180,000 members of the Conservative Party, many of whom regard Thatcher as a heroine. Millions of other British voters remember her differently.

Thatcher privatized state-owned industries, sold off public housing and defeated Britains coal miners after a bitter, year-long strike. Under her leadership, industries shut and millions were thrown out of work, especially in the north of England.

Johnson, whose Conservative hero is Winston Churchill rather than Thatcher, secured a huge election victory in 2019 by winning over voters in northern Englands post-industrial towns who had never considered supporting the Conservatives before.

Honeyman said that Johnsons successor would be wise not to laud Thatcher too loudly if they hope to hang onto those northern districts, where people still talk about the closure of factories and mines and about the impact that that had upon their communities, about the way it fractured peoples lives.

This isnt ancient history for some of these people, she said. This is their lived experience.

Those memories are not so vivid for the 47-year-old Truss, who was a teenager when Thatcher left office. Sunak, now 42, was just 10 years old in 1990.

But 84-year-old Conservative veteran Norman Fowler, who served in Thatchers government and later served as speaker of the House of Lords, warned the candidates against overdoing it with the Iron Lady worship.

I was in her Cabinet, shadow and real, for 15 years, Fowler told Times Radio. Even I wouldnt say that she was perfect in every way. And therefore, the party need not model itself entirely upon her. So I would give it a rest. JILL LAWLESS, LONDON , MDT/AP

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Maggie's legacy: Divisive Thatcher looms over UK Tory race - Macau Daily Times