



The Times, 22-November-2000



If The Tories have not left Margaret behind



Article by the Shadow Chancellor Michael Portillo



Thatcherism did not end when Mrs T moved out of 10 Downing Street

Ten years ago, I was one of a small group of Conservative MPs who pleaded in vain with Mrs Thatcher not to resign. To this day I believe that had she thrown herself into a campaign to retain the leadership she could have won, and gone on to win the 1992 general election against Neil Kinnock. People remember now how unpopular she had become; but they should also recall that she had a majority of 100, and had never been defeated or even run close.



Thatcherism contained some tough messages and she took the country on a necessarily rough ride. But self-evidently none of what she achieved would have been possible had she not won office again and again, and she could not have done that without appealing to a very broad sweep of the British electorate. Margaret Thatcher attracted to the Tories people who had never thought of voting Conservative before, and she did that through an awesome instinct for people's anxieties and aspirations. Her pledge to make council tenants homeowners was the best example. She talked about voters' real concerns in their language.



I am not one of those who thinks that Margaret Thatcher's ideas are outdated. Far from it. It seems rather that Britain urgently needs to relearn many of the things she "taught" us.

These are the Thatcherite principles that come most readily to my mind. There is no such thing as government money, only taxpayers' money. The country cannot spend more than it earns. Any fool can promise ways of spending national prosperity, but what matters are the policies that enable business to create that prosperity in the first place. Lower tax rates motivate people and stimulate economic activity; such economic dynamism may well lead to higher tax receipts. People flourish when they are given personal responsibility, and Conservatives believe that change for the better in society is more likely to be achieved by people than by governments. People are responsible for their own behaviour, and have direct obligations towards their families and communities that cannot be subcontracted to government. Britain should remain independent.



Such ideas are at the heart of Conservatism today. They are the guiding thoughts of William Hague and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet. Labour mouths some of these precepts, but it piles on taxes and expands the scope of the State.



What has worried Conservatives in recent years is that our messages, despite their relevance, were not getting through. In the years following Mrs Thatcher's removal, the party came to be regarded as too narrow. While the Tories continued to believe in opportunity, as Margaret Thatcher passionately does - especially through the improvement of education - by 1997 voters viewed the Conservatives as too absorbed with internal strife. Apparently we no longer spoke with enough conviction about our social agenda, about our idealism, or about our enthusiasm for a better society in which people could have more choice, independence and self-esteem. Those aspects of Thatcherism were spoken of too quietly.



Recently, we Conservatives have returned to those themes. William Hague is redefining the party in terms of all the things that we are for (personal responsibility, family ties, altruism, thrift, liberty) rather than what we are against. Like Margaret Thatcher, William represents in his own life's journey the Conservative ideal of people rising through their own efforts in a fair and meritocratic society.

There are other points about Margaret Thatcher that sometimes get forgotten. She has many friends among the ethnic groups, and attracted widespread support there, especially in the British Asian community. Her generous-spirited response to personal problems that sometimes arose among her colleagues in Government showed that she was not judgmental.



Margaret Thatcher had rare vision and purpose, but contrary to popular belief, she often proceeded cautiously. She knew exactly what she wanted to accomplish, but she was happy to tack towards her destination when a straight line seemed unachievable. She went into the 1979 election without any commitment to privatise, and only general propositions about switching the burden of tax from direct to indirect. She approached trade union reform piecemeal. It was nine years before she abolished the highly protectionist dockwork labour scheme. When the No Turning Back Group first developed the blueprint for grant-maintained schools, she at first regarded the idea as impractical, and gave us a verbal drubbing.



When she was challenged on her commitment to the National Health Service, she boasted about how much more she was spending than Labour had. Of course, she knew better than to confuse outcomes with inputs, but she also understood that we had to make clear our commitment to the health service by spending heavily on it, in order to have any chance of winning support for its reform.

Perhaps the most obvious thing about Thatcherism, now overlooked, is that it wasn't at all reactionary or backward-looking. It was at the cutting edge. It offered solutions suited to the modern world. Her policies were copied across the globe. That is where any party seeking office needs to be.



William Hague's Conservatism picks up the Thatcherite thread. We are focused on how to make Britain dynamic and competitive through lower taxation, and how to reverse the growth of the State, which has resumed under Labour. Those messages are winners, particularly as more voters realise that they come from a party that is magnanimous and forward-looking, and ambitious for all our people.







