A century after her birth, and thirty-five years after she left office, the memory of Margaret Thatcher continues to loom over British politics. Kemi Badenoch, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss and Nigel Farage have all, in different ways, sought to position themselves as Thatcher’s inheritor. Keir Starmer promised to lead a government as radical as Margaret Thatcher’s, but sparked controversy when he moved her portrait out of his office in Number 10.
In this event, to mark the centenary of her birth, we ask why Margaret Thatcher continues to cast such a shadow across British politics. We consider how her reputation has changed, whether she is misremembered today and what lessons – good or bad – might be drawn from her time in power.
We are joined for this event by Gillian Shephard, a minister in the Thatcher and Major governments and author of The Real Iron Lady; Simone Finn, Conservative peer and deputy chief-of-staff to the prime minister from 2021 to 2022; Philip Cowley, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University London; and Robert Saunders, Reader in British History at Queen Mary and editor of Making Thatcher’s Britain.
