Are We All Thatcherites Now?
| DOI | 10.1177/2041905819854307 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
4 POLITICAL INSIGHT • JUNE 2019
In an article in June 2002, Peter Mandelson
– one of the key architects of New
Labour – declared ‘we are all Thatcherites
now’. (The New Labour supremo was
echoing the Liberal politician Sir William
Harcourt’s 1880s claim that ‘we are all socialists
now’). May 2019 saw the 40th anniversary
of Margaret Thatcher’s rst general election
victory as Conservative leader. A politician
who, it is widely said, changed the face of
modern Britain. Now, then, appears to be a
good time to both assess Lord Mandelson’s
claim and the extent to which people in Britain
today hold ‘Thatcherite’ beliefs and attitudes.
From mid-January to mid-February we ran
a survey of people in Britain asking about their
attitudes, some of which were key Thatcherite
ones, and how they voted in the 2017 General
Election. This article summarises the main
ndings of our research.
Thatcherite beliefs?
Thatcherism, in keeping with Reaganism in the
USA during the 1980s, was made up of two
Are We All
Thatcherites Now?
Margaret Thatcher transformed British politics over more than a
decade in power. But how has the Iron Lady influenced contemporary
political attitudes? Stephen Farrall, Emily Gray and Phil Jones
examine the endurance of Thatcherite beliefs in Britain today.
broad strands of thought: a neo-conservative
element that emphasised traditional values
and respect for law and order, and a neo-
liberal strand which promoted reliance on the
marketplace and a rejection of state-owned
services and businesses. Some of the questions
we asked attempted to assess the extent to
which people held values in line with both of
these intellectual poles. We also asked people
about their ‘beliefs’ about Margaret Thatcher
(whether she was right to take on trade unions,
made Britain great again, ensured prosperity
for all and so on). We then scored responses in
terms of being in the top (or bottom) half on
these three dimensions (See Table 1).
More than half of most age groups surveyed
held neo-liberal values. The two groups who
dier noticeably are those who are now aged
© Press Association
Political Insight May 2019.indd 4 08/05/2019 10:55
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