LONDON – As Rishi Sunak began his campaign for British Conservative Party leader and prime minister on Saturday, his choice of location – a tire shop in the market town of Grantham – felt almost inevitable. Grantham is the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, an icon of the right who plays a big part in every Conservative leadership contest, but never more so than in these difficult economic times.
Sunak and his opponent, Liz Truss, are both vying to wrap themselves in the mantle of Thatcher, who was Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. Each poses as the true heir to her free-market, low-tax, deregulatory revolution at home, and her vigorous defense of western democracy abroad.
“We have to be radical,” said Mr Sunak, who, like Mrs Truss, served in Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government and is responsible for some of the economic policies he is now proposing to wipe out. The agenda Sunak is advocating, he told party supporters, was “common sense Thatcherism”.
But Thatcher experts say the candidates are picking the legacy of the woman known as the “Iron Lady” as the icing on the cake, emphasizing the elements that make the crowd pleasing while obscuring the less palatable ones. like some tax hikes in 1981, during the depths of a recession, at a time when she was determined to curb runaway inflation.
“When Rishi and Truss invoke Thatcher, they both say something true, but neither tells the whole truth,” said Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph who wrote a three-volume biography of Thatcher. “Truss is right when she says she believed in tax cuts and less regulation,” he said, “but if Rishi says she cared about fiscal responsibility, that’s true.”
While both candidates pledge to cut taxes, former Finance Minister Sunak says this can only happen if inflation is tamed. He accuses Mrs. Truss, who has said little about tax implications, of telling “fairy tales”. His approach reflects Thatcher’s belief in balancing the books and her aversion to borrowing, which she saw as a burden on future generations.
Yet neither candidate seems to have the audacity to use the full Thatcher playbook. Like her, she made her offer for Downing Street in an era of rising inflation and labor unrest, albeit at much higher tax rates. Its economic shock therapy — including a hefty hike in sales taxes — dampened inflation, but at the cost of a deep recession and mass unemployment.
It is much easier to channel Thatcher stylistically, as Mrs Truss does. As Secretary of State, Mrs. Truss appears to have modeled her appearances on the international stage after the Iron Lady, copying famous images, including one of Thatcher at the tower of a tank in West Germany. She even wore a silk pussy-bow blouse with a bow, a well-known feature of the Thatcher wardrobe.
Even though that has provoked chuckles from London’s political classes, some analysts said they didn’t blame Ms. Truss. Her target audience is the approximately 160,000 members of the Conservative Party who will elect the next leader. To these voters, many of whom are older and quite right-wing, Thatcher remains a respected figure, second only to Winston Churchill in the pantheon of Tory grandees. Some liken her status to Ronald Reagan’s canonization among ordinary Republicans in the United States.
“It’s a huge legacy,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at Kent University. “It’s hard to overestimate the impact Margaret Thatcher still has on the conservative base.”
Mr. Moore said that because Mrs. Truss is a woman, the comparison with… Thatcher was inevitable and that she might as well use it to her advantage. But he wondered if she was going too far, at the risk of self-parody.
“It’s dangerous to put on Thatcher’s clothes because they often don’t fit,” he said. “Truss is, not yet in any case, a great figure.”
By summoning Thatcher to the world stage, Mrs. Truss’ message seems to be that only she can take on President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as her hero attacked the Soviets. Mrs. Truss once came up with the idea of arming Taiwan; she and Mr Sunak have exchanged claims about who would be stricter against China.
Ms. Truss, for her part, has rejected suggestions she channels Thatcher. She pointed out that she had charted her own path to the top of British politics, although there are parallels: Both women grew up in middle-class families and attended Oxford University. But Mrs Thatcher was president of the university’s Conservative Association, while Mrs Truss was a Liberal Democrat.
“It’s quite frustrating that female politicians are always compared to Margaret Thatcher, while male politicians are not compared to Ted Heath,” Ms Truss said in a recent interview with GB News, citing another Tory Prime Minister. (She emphatically did not mention Churchill.)
Mrs Truss and Thatcher differ most clearly on economic policy. Ms Truss’s call for immediate tax cuts has been questioned by Norman Lamont, who was, among other things, Secretary of the Treasury. Thatcher. He noted that, despite some notable cuts in income tax rates, between 1979 and 1981, Mrs Thatcher, on a net basis, raised taxes more than cut them.
Sunak has another problem: The current spiral of inflation is at least partly the legacy of his stewardship of the economy, with his massive state spending to protect people from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Mrs. Truss’s defenders portray him as the architect of an economic slump.
“A visit to Grantham will not make Rishi Sunak a Thatcherite,” wrote John Redwood, a right-wing conservative lawmaker who once headed Thatcher’s Downing Street policy unit. on Twitter. “In the seven years I’ve known him, he’s never asked me about Margaret Thatcher or her economic policies, despite knowing I was her mid-term economic and policy adviser.”
That stopped Mr. Sunak dislikes quoting Thatcher in his speech, or his wife, Akshata Murty, taking a selfie in front of a statue of her in Grantham. Despite their very different ethnic backgrounds – Mr Sunak’s parents are Indians who immigrated to Britain from East Africa – there are also parallels: Mr Sunak’s mother owned a pharmacy; Thatcher’s father runs a grocery store.
Perhaps the bigger question is whether it makes electoral sense for the Conservatives to continue nurturing the Thatcher cult.
While her up-by-your-bootstraps message appealed to some working-class voters, Thatcher, who died in 2013, never won the country’s industrial north, where her shock therapy and battles with the miners’ unions left a lasting bitter taste. Johnson managed to convert some of these voters in 2019, and the party will have to hold on to them to fend off the Labor Party in the next general election.
When Mr Johnson campaigned in these hollowed-out industrial areas, he rarely appealed to Thatcher – and for good reason. “Even today Margaret Thatcher is still seen as incredibly toxic,” said Professor Goodwin.