It is almost impossible to compare a mere Leader of the Opposition to our greatest peacetime Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. But three points should be borne in mind. The first is that back in 1979, no one was predicting that Mrs Thatcher would become a world-famous figure. She was governing a troubled nation with a divided Cabinet. Although she heaped scorn on the defeatist sophisticates who thought that the best any government could achieve was the orderly management of decline, would scorn be enough? The idea that this woman would help to win the Cold War while bringing the unions within the rule of law and the nationalised industries within the laws of economics, as well as cutting income tax to 1930s levels; in 1979, that would not have sounded like prophecy. It would have sounded like heresy.
Second, Margaret Thatcher was a Fabian. As a governing doctrine, Thatcherism was gradualist. She took her time to achieve her objectives; she did not fight her domestic battles until she knew that she could win them. Everyone remembers the miners’ strike of 1984-85: a transforming victory. But in 1981, Mrs Thatcher had backed away from confronting the miners, because she was advised that the coal stocks were inadequate. She was Montgomery, not Prince Rupert.
Third, even though Mrs Thatcher was great, she was not always right. Nor did she always win. It might have been assumed that when the UK joined the Common Market, we had secured free trade with Europe. Not so: a higher price had to be paid through the European Single Act, involving a significant loss of sovereignty. Brussels had more power over Britain in 1990 than in 1979.
Apropos of sovereignty, Margaret Thatcher was a devout Unionist. Yet she signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement: another concession of sovereignty.
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