For Thatcher, balancing the books was more important than cutting taxes
The portrait of Margaret Thatcher may no longer hang over one of the rooms in No 10 she used for meetings (and long, fraught speech-writing sessions). But her presence still looms large over the Conservative leadership contest.
It is entirely understandable that the Party’s greatest peacetime leader of the last century should be such a talisman with the potential to help show Conservatives a route out of the current mess.
But to do that Conservatives need to escape the attempt to use interpretations of her, to kill debate, setting out ever narrower conditions of what it is to be a true Conservative. Instead, the Party could have a lively open argument about what Thatcherism means and what might make it relevant today.
And where better to conduct that than in the pages of ConservativeHome, under its excellent new editor? So here goes.
Discover David Willetts' Work
Explore more of David's work and learn more about his professional career.
