Writing speeches for Margaret

Bruce Anderson has an interesting CAPX piece on writing speeches for Margaret Thatcher.

How to write a speech for Margaret Thatcher

Most Tories regard opposition as a deeply unnatural state of affairs. We are the natural party of government: the real national party. Now we are condemned to exile from power for at least one Parliament. There is a certain amount of whistling in the dark: ‘what goes down can also go up’. But we have an almighty task to be ready to mount a challenge by 2029, the fiftieth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s accession to power…

Back then, suppose anyone had suggested that she would help to win the Cold War while subjecting the trade unions to the rule of law; impose financial discipline on the nationalised industries and indeed privatise them whenever possible; deal with inflation (at least for a few years); and revive the animal spirits of the British middle classes while promoting the sale of council properties in a radical measure of economic emancipation for many working-class families? Imagine, in short, someone suggesting in 1975 that Mrs Thatcher would become the UK’s greatest domestic PM. What response could they have expected? Incredulity would have been an understatement. No wonder many Tories still regard her as their regina quondam, reginaque futurus.

The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that our subsequent political decline has been inescapably obvious – we hardly know what political oversight is supposed to achieve. It is not merely a few misty reflections in those rose-tinted spectacles. Margaret Thatcher’s grasp of political leadership may be measured in terms of  those who still loathe her memory. 

Just after the 1987 election, I wrote that Mrs Thatcher was one of the greatest women who ever lived. At moments, I have been tempted to drop the ‘one of’. Almost all those who ever worked for her knew how exasperating she could be. They also knew that there was an overwhelming consolation: being a witness while history was in the making.