Keir Starmer could learn a lot from Margaret Thatcher, writes Iain Dale

14 June 2025, 19:09 | Updated: 14 June 2025, 22:00

Margaret Thatcher.

Picture:
Alamy

Most people who lived through the Thatcher years are incapable of a dispassionate assessment of her record.

Even many, if not most, political academics and historians, who are trained to know better find the task almost impossible.

There is, however, a general consensus that the two greatest peacetime prime ministers of the twentieth century were Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.

They were both political changemakers, and both stamped their mark on the country in no uncertain terms.

What they had in commons was that each knew their own mind. They had a clear sense of what the country’s problems were and gave their governments a clear sense of direction.

They were both, as Tony Benn, would have put it, signposts rather than weathervanes.

Compare them with most modern day politicians and today’s examples are found wanting.

Keir Starmer is perhaps the most perfect exemplification of the weathervane.

No one can really identify what he believes in. He could learn a lot from Margaret Thatcher.

Keir Starmer is perhaps the most perfect exemplification of the weathervane.

Picture:
Alamy

I think it is certainly true that if Margaret Thatcher had resigned on her tenth anniversary in power, her reputation in the UK would be very different to that which we read about today.

Nigel Lawson and Sir Geoffrey Howe would not have resigned. There would have been no leadership challenge from Sir Anthony Meyer.

The poll tax riots would not have happened. There would have been no EEC summit fallout in Rome. I could go on.

Abroad, she is still feted as a hugely significant figure, a British political colossus, with perhaps only Tony Blair managing to equal her reputation in the United States.

But she didn’t take her husband’s advice to quit. She was determined to carry on. Was it hubris? Was it because she thought no one else was capable of doing the job?

If so, she was wholly wrong, and it played into a perception that was promulgated of her in the media as her being increasingly out of touch.

The skill she had consistently displayed of having her finger on the pulse of the British public seemed to be deserting her.

Perhaps her biggest failure, which, more than anything else, precipitated her downfall, was the introduction of the Community Charge, or Poll Tax.

She refused to brook any dissent on it and was convinced it was the best way to replace the loathed domestic rates.

Had she retained her ability to understand the thoughts of the ordinary citizen she would have realised that it was widely viewed as unfair, iniquitous and wicked.

So the lesson is: Don’t outstay your welcome. Quit while you’re ahead. It was a lesson Justin Trudeau failed to learn., and he paid the price.

Margaret Thatcher by Iain Dale is published in hardback by Swift Press in hardback, eBook and audiobook.

Signed copies can be ordered here

https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r02/___https://www.politicos.co.uk/products/margaret-thatcher-a-short-biography-signed-by-iain-dale-coming-5-june-2025___.YzJlOmdsb2JhbGhvc3Rpbmc6YzpvOmZmNjRmZjY2ZmRlZDY4Y2U2YTRiYzhiYjNiOTdlYjhmOjc6YmQ3NTpkMjQ2MTA0NzM1MWI5NGQyYmJmMWJlZTkzMWVlNTAxZDE5MjE3NWFjY2M0ZGU1MWU2MDJkNDk1ZTMwNTA0MzliOnQ6VDpO

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Iain Dale is on LBC 7-10pm Monday to Thursday.

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