Kemi Badenoch likes a good Thatcher comparison. The current Tory leader is presently reading Patrick Cosgrave’s account of the Iron Lady’s rise to the top.
It was another book – John Ranelagh’s Thatcher’s People – that recorded how in one 1970s Conservative policy meeting, a speaker started to argue that the party should adopt a pragmatic middle way. Thatcher removed her copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty from her handbag, slammed it down on the table and declared, ‘This is what we believe.’
This morning was Badenoch’s attempt to do something similar. Appearing at the Arc conference in London, the Tory leader used a 1,700 word speech to set out her vision to some of the 4,000 attendees assembled from across the globe. It was the kind of big picture, Manichean address which Badenoch relishes: lots of talk about the West in peril, free speech in decline and a crisis of confidence in national institutions.
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