Margaret Thatcher's centenary: 100 years since the birth of the Iron Lady

October 13th 2025 will be the centenary of Margaret Thatcher’s birth. It will also be my 55th as I share a birthday with her. We also both hail from Lincolnshire. In various ways, Margaret Thatcher has been part of my life for five decades.

In February of this year we commemorated 50 years since Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party. It is an appropriate time, therefore, to reflect on Mrs Thatcher’s time in office and her legacy.

I don’t remember her becoming leader when I was four in 1975, but I do vividly remember sitting in candlelight when the power went out during the Winter of Discontent - and I certainly remember Margaret Thatcher becoming our first female Prime Minister in May 1979.

Over her fifteen years as leader and eleven years in office, Margaret Thatcher changed our party and our country. She realigned the post war socioeconomic and political consensus.

And she had a huge personal influence no me.

I’m from a normal, working-class background in the Midlands.

My Dad was a Labour-voting, trade unionist, factory worker, my Mum worked on the tills at Asda, and I went to the local Comprehensive School.

My grandparents, and most of my family lived in council houses. Conventional wisdom might suggest I should have become a Labour supporter.

But instead, the positive, can-do, aspirational messages of Margaret Thatcher resonated with me. Her words caught my attention as I was formulating my political views as a teenager.

I found myself agreeing with every word she said - and in particular the message that no matter where you come from, if you work hard and want to do well in life, the Conservative Party will back you.

It’s not where you come from that matters, but where you are going. Success is to be applauded.

Ambition is not a dirty word. Wanting to do better for yourself, your family, and your country is to be encouraged not something to be embarrassed about.

The message I was hearing from Margaret Thatcher was clear: the Conservative Party is the party of optimism, meritocracy and opportunity. I found my political home.

I am in no doubt that without the motivating words and aspirational message from Mrs Thatcher, I would not have been the first person in my family to go to university, nor the first person from my Comprehensive School to go to Oxford.

I would not have become interested in politics and I would not have become an MP or a minister. Certainly not a Conservative one!

Margaret Thatcher is one of the few political leaders to have been given an ‘ism’ suffix: Thatcherism.

Working alongside Sir Keith Joseph and others after winning the leadership election, she worked to determine a new direction for the Conservative Party and the country based on free markets and a smaller state.

Many of the things that Margaret Thatcher said 50 years ago resonate today.

Two of my favourites (always guaranteed to get a positive response at a Conservative Party gathering) are: “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money” and “there is no such thing as public money, there is only taxpayer’s money.”

Mrs Thatcher raised important questions about the purpose and role of the state versus the individual and the family. If the state does everything, what incentive do people have to look after themselves?

Some of these themes will sound familiar to anyone who heard Kemi Badenoch’s speech at Conservative Party Conference. There’s a good reason for that.

The values and principles that Margaret Thatcher articulated are as true today as they were then.

The interpretation and policy implications may be different - especially in this fast-changing digital age. But values such as: freedom; democracy; self-reliance; justice; and patriotism are enduring.

As are principles such as: free enterprise; small government; low taxes; personal responsibility; security at home and abroad; equality of opportunity; and living within your means.

These core Conservative values and principles are held dear by large swathes of the British public, too – and they differentiate us from all other parties.

They transparently differentiate us from Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems who don’t believe in low taxes, small government or personal responsibility.

The left don’t believe in equality of opportunity. They believe in equality of outcomes - and would rather drag everyone down rather than do the hard work to lift everyone up.

And despite some of their rhetoric, Reform don’t believe in many of these core Conservative principles either. Just look at their policies.

Reform made £140 billion of unfunded tax and spending pledges at the last election. They’ve made even more splurge announcements since.

Their numbers don’t stack up. It’s not sound money. It’s not living within your means. It’s not encouraging personal responsibility. Margaret Thatcher would hate it.

Pretending you can have simple answers to complex questions is not Conservatism, is not Thatcherism - it’s populism.

Evoking the spirit of Thatcherism will help us beat Reform. In Kemi Badenoch we have a leader who can appropriately and selectively channel Thatcherism while putting her own stamp on what it means to be a Conservative in the 2020s.

Margaret Thatcher’s governments’ achieved some remarkable things that transformed the lives of millions of people. She took on the unions and shifted the centre of economic gravity back towards the private sector.

She transformed the City of London with Big Bang. She advanced a capital owning democracy with the sale of council houses and privatisations of former nationalised industries. Millions of people owned shares for the very first time.

Margaret Thatcher was the first world leader to call for action to tackle global warming. Alongside her political soulmate, Ronald Reagan, she helped bring an end to the Cold War and she defeated aggression from overseas.

Would anyone other than Mrs Thatcher have so robustly defended the Falklands?

But she is not without controversy.

From the sinking of the Belgrano to losing her ‘brilliant, brilliant’ Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, her judgement has sometimes been brought into question. Over eleven years, qualities that were once considered strengths morphed into weaknesses.

Her steely determination became inflexibility. Her admirable work ethic turned into an inability to delegate or trust cabinet colleagues. Her common touch and connection with the British public (which delivered 3 General Election victories) deserted her as she doggedly pursued intellectually rigorous but politically toxic policies such as the poll tax.

Of course, it should not be overlooked that Margaret Thatcher was the UK’s first woman Prime Minister. Nor should it be forgotten what a male-dominated world she operated in.

When she entered parliament for the first time in 1959, there were just 25 female MPs. By 1987 there were still only 41. There are now 263 female MPs.

When asked by Terry Wogan why men don’t seem to make any concession for the fact that she is a woman, Mrs Thatcher showed a rare glimpse of humour by responding: “Why should they? I don’t make any concession to the fact that they are men!”

But paradoxically, Margaret Thatcher failed to appoint a single woman from the House of Commons to any of her cabinets.

Edwina Currie (who also shares a birthday with Margaret Thatcher) commented: “It was a prejudice that lost her friends in 1990 when she was looking for women to support her.”

But her successes more than make up for her failures. Margaret Thatcher renewed and rejuvenated the Conservative Party and necessitated a transformation of the Labour Party in the process.

She shifted the centre of political gravity for two generations – and counting.

So, on what would have been her 100th birthday, I would like to say thank you Margaret Thatcher. Your legacy lives on - and our country is better off for it.