For only the fourth time in 50 years, a British political party is heading to its annual conference having just swept from opposition into power. Over the next four days – winter fuel allowance and Sue Gray’s pay permitting – it may be tempting for Labour and their leader to luxuriate in the scale of their victory once more. But Keir Starmer wants to lead a “decade of national renewal”, which means he must do something even rarer: lay the groundwork now to win, and govern for, a full second term.
Thatcher managed it, and so did Blair. But they remain the only two prime ministers to have served two consecutive terms of four years in the history of British mass democracy. David Cameron secured a second win but was soon broken by Brexit; prime ministers before and since have failed even to make it that far. If Starmer really intends to make this a decade of “renewal”, he can start by demonstrating a grasp of this history. Because the prime ministers who have created enduring, transformative governments – like Thatcher, Blair and Clement Attlee – were those who saw beyond the daily whirl, and heeded the deeper forces that were reconfiguring the world. They recognised how the patterns of hope and fear that shape the electorate’s priorities were already starting to change. And they found a way to turn that into a compelling narrative: a story of how what had once been unthinkable was now not just possible, but unavoidable.
As part of my research for the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), I’ve been examining these precedents. And it is telling that the advent of the Thatcher government has already become a reference point for this Labour Party in key speeches over the past 12 months. In her Mais Lecture in March, Rachel Reeves declared that, “as in the 1970s, we are in a moment of flux” in which “old certainties… have been found wanting”; it was time, as in 1979, to “fashion a new economic settlement”. Starmer’s conference speech last year was influenced by Thatcher’s in 1978. He took aim at Rishi Sunak’s government, not for its mendacity, but for its “mindset”, denouncing it as “unable to see, unable to listen, unable to stand in your shoes” – just as Thatcher had argued that Callaghan’s government was not “remarkably foolish” or “unusually wicked”, but made up of “men who live by illusions”. What Labour have recognised is that Thatcher’s strategy provides a path to dismantle the very political legacy it helped create. Don’t just criticise your opponents personally: explain how the old orthodoxy has broken, and how it can be replaced.
Thatcher had to make this case in her first post-victory conference speech. When she stood up to address her delighted party on 12 October 1979, the new prime minister acknowledged that for voters “so much has been promised in the past, so much has come to nothing”. She could already hear the disillusioned grumblings: “The Conservatives have been in five months. Things do not seem to be that much better.” As you’d expect, she assured them that tackling long-neglected problems would “take time”. Crucially, however, she declared that this was because the new government had to “move this country in a new direction… to create a wholly new attitude of mind”.
Here, right at the start, was the basis for Thatcher’s transformative decade in office. She took aim at her opponents’ underlying ideas and how they had skewed society. She insisted that: “Today trade unions have more power over working people and their families than any boss has.” In seeking to overturn that, her speech criticised the failure to see a link between productivity and pay, dismissing the annual winter strikes as self-defeating “madness.” This was not simply an attempt to change how people thought from on high, however. She recognised that the country was already moving towards a “new attitude of mind”. Aspirational younger voters, including many trade unionists, had long chafed against the limits of the 1945 settlement, built in the shadow of a depression they didn’t remember. The turn in the 1960s to rebellious self-fulfilment would have baffled Clement Attlee – but it helped give Thatcher’s narrative a ready audience. She was able to begin her speech by hailing how the demand for change had won the Conservatives “the largest trade union vote in our history”.
Since 1945, the boundaries of what was politically possible had been defined by the prevailing belief that there should be no return to the mass unemployment of the 1930s. Thatcher recognised that the public was prepared to replace that with a new taboo: there must be no return to the strikes and inflation of the 1970s. Starmer has suggested that there must be no return to the misery and insecurity of the 2010s, and that his government will put working people’s well-being first. But to use this as the foundation of a transformative government, he may need to fight as fiercely as Thatcher did to overcome entrenched ideas and sensibilities.
She matched this rhetoric with policy – beginning with that 1979 conference speech which introduced two lasting innovations. First, her right-to-buy policy was an unashamed offer to a key voter segment who were vital to her project: skilled working-class council tenants, eager to own their homes. By turning up in person to hand the deeds to one such family, she captured her story of transformation in a single photograph: power shifting from the state to the aspiring individual, overcoming resistant Labour councils to make it happen. Today, we see the beginnings of a similar “government vs vested interests” narrative is discernible in Starmer’s determination to “ignore appeals for the status quo on private school tax breaks,” and face down Nimby-ism, bulldozing through planning obstacles to start building houses. Within days of taking office as Labour’s Energy Minister, Ed Miliband made a point of approving the construction of three large, controversial new solar farms.
Thatcher’s second innovation was her effort to weaken the power of the unions and here, her approach is particularly instructive. She proceeded cautiously, allowing employment secretary Jim Prior to introduce an Employment Bill in 1980 that marked the beginning of reform, despite hardliners condemning it as too timid. By 1982, she had replaced Prior with Norman Tebbit, who also trod carefully while accomplishing what Prior had resisted: effectively banning secondary picketing. This strategy – pushing new legislation as far as politically possible, entrenching it, and then advancing further – continued throughout the 1980s. It wasn’t until 1990 that the closed shop, which Thatcher had denounced in her 1979 conference speech, was banned outright.
The key question for Starmer’s government is whether its early incremental changes – as on workers’ rights – set a trajectory that leads to genuine transformation. Today, right-wing newspapers shudder with horror over the relatively mild promises in the “New Deal for Working People”, even as some in the unions spy slippery get-out clauses, such as Labour’s use of the qualifying term “exploitative” in its commitment to ban zero-hours contracts. Although Labour has pledged to repeal the strictures of the 2016 Trade Union Act, Thatcher’s once-unthinkably restrictive reforms from the 1980s are not on the table. At least, not for now.
There was one more crucial step Thatcher took towards securing a second term, which came when she confronted a crisis. As unemployment rose towards 1930s levels, she faced a choice between unthinkables. Plough on, and risk portraying her party as irredeemably callous – or U-turn, as Edward Heath had done before her, and jeopardise her credibility. She chose to plough on, even amid riots and tanking poll ratings. In January 1982, unemployment had passed three million, and the old taboo passed with it. The country’s attitude of mind had shifted. A second election victory, which had seemed impossible in 1981, began to look plausible.
Tony Blair overturned fewer orthodoxies during his time in government. However, midway through his first term, he faced a similar choice. In his 1999 conference speech, he lambasted the “forces of conservatism” that were holding the country back. Yet his pollster, Philip Gould, warned that, fairly or not, voters felt “neglected and ignored” – that the government spoke but didn’t deliver, especially regarding the NHS, which seemed “too big to turn around”.[2] The No 10 strategist Peter Hyman – who would later shape Starmer’s “missions” – urged New Labour’s older generation to be more radical, shedding the fears from the 1980s.
The winter of 1999-2000 brought this to a crisis point: a severe flu outbreak resulted in patients being treated in corridors; cancelled operations cost a pensioner her life. On Breakfast with Frost that January, Blair suddenly proclaimed that health spending would be sharply increased to match the EU average within five years. Two months later, Gordon Brown announced a once unthinkable £2bn rise in NHS spending, with four annual increases of 6.1 per cent in real terms to follow.[3] New Labour was ushering in a new attitude of mind, where high public spending was seen as sensible centrism, and “Tory cuts” were the stuff of out-of-date ideology. This rhetorical shift was evident in the 2001 election campaign when, despite losing three million votes, Labour managed to maintain its huge majority.
David Cameron faced a similarly invidious choice even before he took power in 2010 – and the decision he took helps explain why he did not get to lead a decade of national renewal. His vision of a “Big Society” promised to restore social bonds and institutions, to reduce the burden of the state, but also to address the impact of the market. At Davos in 2009, Cameron had lambasted the “recklessness and greed” that led to the 2008 crash and insisted that “we must shape capitalism to suit the needs of society”, rather than the other way round. It was time to abandon “the old orthodoxy that nothing should be allowed to impede the pursuit of profit”.
Yet already, when he came to address his party conference as prime minister for the first time, this rhetoric had faded. The Big Society never materialised because its proponents were not sufficiently willing or able to do what Thatcher had done: confront the extent to which old ideas had created an intolerable situation: in this case how free market dogma had left many people exposed to economic insecurity. Rather than advancing beyond Thatcherism, Cameron retreated into it, even reviving her rhetoric of fiscal “household budgets” that enabled retrenchment. As a result, bailed-out bankers thrived while wages stagnated, and public services were cut. Some of the resulting resentment found expression in the Brexit vote that torpedoed his premiership. His successors also proved unable to deliver the kind of renewal he had promised.
Sooner or later, Starmer’s government may confront its own crisis and face a choice between unthinkable options: breaking from the orthodoxy of the past or retreating into it. As a government insider told the New Statesman on Monday 16 September: “Keir will ultimately have to choose between the missions and the fiscal rules.” While it is risky for the government to attempt too much to improve the lives of ordinary people, there is also danger in doing too little. The government is aware of the threat that economic despair and disillusionment with mainstream politics pose, especially as they can be effectively exploited by far-right populists. Rachel Reeves warned of this well before the summer’s riots. The goal of being “tough on populism, tough on the causes of populism” underlines the point that, if it seeks to be transformative enough to restore faith in democracy, Starmer’s government may need to confront outdated thinking and entrenched vested interests, guided by its overarching aim of improving the lives of working people.
This will be even more electorally effective if it aligns with a shift in public opinion that is already underway. A feeling that ordinary people have been treated with insufficient respect, and that fairness must be a higher priority, has been apparent since at least the mid 2010s. This was accepted by Theresa May when she dedicated her government to serving those who were “just managing” and addressing “burning injustices”, and when she called for chief executives to be more respectful of the communities where their companies were based. It was recognised by Michael Gove when he argued that Covid underlined the need to tackle inequality, said that “levelling up” was vital, and that the Grenfell disaster revealed “the unacceptable face of capitalism.”
Starmer’s oratorical prowess may never match that of Thatcher or Blair – but in the upcoming speech he can still follow them in casting himself as an insurgent, bulldozing barriers on behalf of ordinary people. This week, he needs to articulate a compelling narrative that sets out the implications of prioritising working people: the outdated ideas that held the Conservatives back will have to go. That way, when the crisis comes, he can seize it to break through old taboos, and clear the path to a new attitude of mind, and with it, national renewal.
[See also: Labour’s Thatcherite revolution]
Content from our partners
Related
