Margaret thatcher

The campaigning backbench MP Robert Halfon was invited to say grace at the First Annual Margaret Thatcher Memorial Dinner at Churchill College, Cambridge on Saturday night. It’s not often you get table thumping after a prayer: ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful for the free market that keeps the price of food down and competition forever and ever. Amen.’ Amen to that.

Mr Steerpike was among the throng that gathered at the East India Club on Thursday night to hear about the development of the Margaret Thatcher Centre, the project to perpetuate the legacy of Britain’s greatest post-war leader. Donal Blaney, the Thatcher Centre’s CEO, and Conor Burns MP invited the Lady’s ‘most fervent supporters’ to pledge £1,000 each in a ‘true sign appreciation to Lady Thatcher’. Blaney also explained why he is ‘devoting his life’ to the project, telling the predominantly male but surprisingly young crowd: ‘Lady Thatcher delivered; now it’s our turn.’ The organisers have drawn inspiration from the USA. The centre ‘will not be a shrine, it will not

Boris Johnson prides himself on being one of the few politicians who gets away with saying the unsayable. He stuck to that theme tonight with his Margaret Thatcher lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, in which he argued that greed isn’t a bad thing. He said: ‘But I also hope that there is no return to that spirit of Loadsamoney heartlessness – figuratively riffling banknotes under the noses of the homeless; and I hope that this time the Gordon Gekkos of London are conspicuous not just for their greed – valid motivator though greed may be for economic progress – as for what they give and do for the

The news that Hull has been crowned the UK’s City of Culture for 2017 was discussed at PMQs. The PM extolled the virtues of the city, and made special mention of native eighties alt rockers The Housemartins. However, with a crashing sense of inevitability, the band’s founder, Paul Heaton, was unhappy with the endorsement: ‘Well, apparently David Cameron likes ‘London 0 Hull 4’. Which part of the attack on his policies and rich friends did he like best???’  The poor wee lamb ranted for a while about Thatcherism, and then concluded: ‘Cameron has ruined my day.’ My heart bleeds. Still, you would have thought that Cameron might have learned his

The BBC’s former political editor, John Cole, has died aged 85. As their political reporter during the Thatcher era, he covered many major stories concerning her, including the miners’ strike and the Brighton bombing. We have dug up from the archive a review, by John Campbell, of Cole’s memoir, ‘As it seemed to me’, from April 1995.  John Cole’s Ulster accent was a shock to metropolitan ears when he became the BBC’s Political Editor in 1981. Scottish or Yorkshire voices were no problem, but there was unfamiliarity amounting almost to incongruity in hearing that particular accent discoursing on subjects wider than the tribal politics of Northern Ireland. Undoubtedly (‘Hondootedly’) it

The most extraordinary thing about the scandal of Unite at Grangemouth and in Falkirk is how long it took the outside world to notice. Partly, this is an effect of devolution: almost nothing Scottish is now considered news in London, even if it is of kingdom-wide importance. Partly, it results from the loss of media and political attention to trade union affairs. So successful was Mrs Thatcher in taming union political power that newspapers laid off the labour correspondents who, in the 1970s and early 1980s, had been the aristocrats of the news room. As for the Tories, they have forgotten the Cold War arts of keeping dossiers on subversion. But

Today the conference hall in Manchester paid our respects, once again, to Britain’s greatest peacetime leader, Margaret Thatcher. listen to ‘The Conseratives’ tribute to Margaret Thatcher’ on Audioboo It is a source of never-ending pride for every Conservative MP that we represent a party which was led by the country’s first female Prime Minister. Baroness Thatcher did more to extend wealth and ownership across the country than any other politician. We are all better off because of what she did. But it’s not only in the conference hall in Manchester that Baroness Thatcher’s legacy is alive and well. Across the country we see the change in the transferring of wealth

When Margaret Thatcher passed away and the broadcasters, newspapers, and casual drinkers in pubs picked over what her legacy really was, one of the key policies mentioned – and praised – time and time again by those from all sides of the political spectrum was the Right to Buy. It was an iconic housing policy that helped people who would never have had a chance of making it onto the housing ladder realise the dream of owning their own property. It was an empowering policy (the detail, of course, is slightly more complicated: the way the policy was designed led to a reduction in the overall size of the social

When Margaret Thatcher won the 1979 election, she was helped into Downing Street by what many of today’s politicians would regard as an unlikely group of Tory voters. The votes of trade unionists were crucial to Margaret Thatcher beating Jim Callaghan in 1979. And this didn’t happen by accident – Mrs Thatcher, the one-time President of the Dartford branch of Conservative Trade Unionists had made active efforts to appeal to those moderate trade unionists who felt let down by their leaders. After becoming leader in 1975, she set out to revive Conservative Trade Unionists. By the 1979 election, the organisation had 250 branches and was able to hold a pre-election

In this increasingly secular age, you would expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to be a figure of diminishing importance. But Justin Welby is fast becoming the most politically influential Archbishop since the war. Part of Welby’s influence stems from the fact that both the Conservatives and Labour think that he is, secretly, one of them. I remember within days of his appointment being approacedh by a Tory minister and then by one of those closest to Ed Miliband. They both wanted to explain how Welby was going to help move public debate in their direction. One never had this kind of conversation about Rowan Williams whose views were thought not