Margaret Thatcher is 100 years young. He memory lives on. Many of the battles she fought need refighting today. Her vision of individual liberty under the rule of impartial law is much needed again. Her belief that lower taxes bring faster growth and more revenue should be adopted by the current government to the nation’s benefit. Her views that people should be given a hand up not a hand out, and that if you can work you should take a job not benefits is said to be the belief of the current government as well. The differences are over the ability to implement it. She held that the first duty of the state is to protect its citizens against crime from within and military threat from without. This is something the current government needs to work on.
I was only 21 when I was elected a County Councillor and first met Cabinet Minister Keith Joseph, 33 years older than me, as we were both fellows of All Souls College Oxford. I developed an active dialogue with him. This led to me advising him and the Shadow Cabinet from 1975 on public spending and the economy, and to working in my spare time for Margaret Thatcher via the Centre for Policy Studies which she and Keith had set up. In her middle period as Prime Minister I was her Chief Policy Adviser in Downing Street . I usually had a weekly one to one for half an hour to discuss the agenda and forward look. I spent many hours in conversation with her over every government issue as one of her speech writers and Policy Adviser. She devoted so much time to the big speeches so they became sessions to influence and develop policy for the future and to get her to consider criticisms and problems with what the government was doing.
She liked new ideas if they were well backed up with evidence, and she looked for people who could turn her general wishes into working policy that would carry the message to every corner of the kingdom. She liked a good argument and could come across as forbidding or tough as she wanted to win any discussion she was in. If the purpose of a meeting we had arranged for her was to reassure or persuade the individual invited in we had to guide her to her other style, which could be charming and was based on a deep concern for the individuals she met or needed to help. She would sometimes in meetings deeply involved with other issues ask us to take immediate action to relieve someone’s suffering or see what the UK government could do given news of some disaster. She wrote many individual notes to people she knew who had family or personal problems.
For the rest of her life I refrained from talking or writing about her, whilst occasionally arranging dinners or meetings involving her. I have always sought to live in the present focused on the future, as the world moved on from the Trade Union and privatisation battles of the 1980s. In the last couple of years I have found myself in demand to tell a new generation what she was like and how she carried the torch for Conservatism, which I am now happy to do.
Her great strengths were her wish to get to the truth, the wish to base policy on plenty of data and clear analysis, and her willingness to do what was right even if it did not poll well. She took a long time to make up her mind on an issue, testing out on others whatever had been recommended to see if it made sense and might work. She was very reluctant to change her mind once she had gone public, seeing U turns as weakness.
She made big changes to her views in government. Her first two years were too dependent on Treasury and Bank orthodoxy to the cost of the country’s economy. She switched to the policies we had hammered out in opposition. She moved from been an enthusiastic European in the 1970s to being sceptical as she came to understand the power grab and the dangers of the Euro. She adopted the wider ownership, share and business owning democracy ideas I took to her, having thought the larger privatisations would prove impossible when I had first discussed them with her in Opposition days.
She always put defence and public safety first. She never wavered in support for a free at the point of need NHS with regular increases in money whilst favouring tax relief so people could choose to go private if they wished. She helped the US win the cold war, she led the liberation of the Falkland Islands from the Argentine invaders, she conquered inflation, ushered in many good years of growth, and championed home ownership and savings for the many.
She was brought down by Cabinet Ministers insisting on putting the UK into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism system which was bound to wreck the economy. She agreed with my analysis, but told me she was forced into acceptance with a promise from the plotters that we could get out again if it did misfire. The truth came to hit her successor John Major, keen architect of the UK going in the European monetary system. When the UK was forced out there was the predictable enormous cost to jobs, growth, inflation and to taxpayers . The country made big losses from its foreign exchange interventions required by the scheme. We had lost a great Prime Minister for no good reason.
October 13, 2025
Margaret Thatcher is still the minds and hearts of all people who love freedom. It is right the battles she fought need to be refought again, with US Trump success being of particular importance to world freedom. The lines have been redrawn and the culture and behaviour of US left is insurrectionist and law-breaking more so than by the mainstream left in the 1980s. Ideas of freedom and private property rights continue to be essential, for example in massive grab of Canadian lands by the Indigenous groups with no property rights based on the authoritarian imposition by the courts and the governments. Still, the most important battles today are about dominance of Christian values of “one man-one woman under God” over gender ideology and other Marxist ideas of modern academe, and dominance of free competition and markets over government suppression of fossil fuel extraction that should continue to govern energy use for generations. Of note, Hillsdale College in Michigan is the only place in North America I am aware of that has a monument to Margaret Thatcher. I hope Mr. Redwood will visit it one day.
Reply I would need an invitation
October 13, 2025
Indeed the best Prime Minister in my lifetime but then all the others were truly dire. But even under Thatcher the lefty, wet, pro EU fake Tory MPs and the blob prevented her doing what was really needed.
The government was far too large and taxes (and red tape) were still far to high when she left office, she closed many excellent grammar schools as education secretary and PM, and foolishly appointed the deluded dope John Major as Chancellor (and let him take her into the ERM), she buried the UK further into the EU, she even fell for climate alarmism at one point! The idiotic structure of the NHS a rigged and unfair dysfunctional market was retained similarly for education, transport, housing, banking…
Then again one might argue that had Thatcher/Major not taken us into the ERM fiasco and it very predictably failed we might never have been given a referendum and finally half left the EU. Albeit with the appalling Boris/Sunak deal.
October 13, 2025
I appreciate you are trying to be balanced, however I believe it is true that Mrs Thatcher saved this Nation from socialism. As Sir J. says, we need to fight that battle all over again today.
October 13, 2025
Not so much socialism from this government – remember the stamp duty avoidance by a certain former deputy PM?
They seem more like closet capitalists. Time for them to out themselves and end the pretence they stand for socialism.
October 13, 2025
Quite so, but then that’s how it always is for the cadre’s; socialism for you… benefits and freebees for me!
October 13, 2025
Do as I say not as I do. Like most hypocritical socialists!
October 13, 2025
Mrs Thatcher was, to a degree, the product of her Methodist / C of E background. A bit like the woman in Proverbs 31 (and Jane Austen, a good Christian, Conservative-minded woman and her heroines). In our more godless world today, women are more focused on ‘charm’ and ‘beauty’ which Proverbs warns against and with the type of ambition of Lady Macbeth than the healthy, down-to-earth and ambition of the woman in Proverbs 31. And / or feminist/WOKE unlike the woman in Proverbs 31. Godliness is ultimately destroying the UK and the West. And Mrs Thatcher (and Jane Austen) would, no doubt, agree.
October 13, 2025
Ironic then that Mrs Thatcher had both brains and beauty.
October 13, 2025
The Bible is not saying anything wrong with woman’s beauty. What is it talking about is women who are narcissistic about their beauty and try and trap men with it as the Sirens symbolise in Homer’s Odyssey.
Real beauty in a woman are things like feminine beauty. Feminine energy. Instead, so many of our women live in their masculine energy. Yuck. In which they don’t thrive.
Lastly, never said anything about brains. In fact, the Bible passage encourages women to be wise in practical matters.
But at end of day, what we don’t want is women like Lady Macbeth. A femme fatal. A jezebel.
And Lady Thatcher, being a Methodist would know exactly what a jezebel is (same for the great Jane Austen who was a devout Christian woman with a sense of humour and wit as all women – and men – should have).
Lady Thatcher (and Jane Austen) would be with me on this. She was no pagan as the modern world is becoming more and more.
October 13, 2025
Major and the rest who ganged up on Mrs T threatening her Premiership with mass resignations unless she went into the ERM got their comeuppance when they crashed out under Major.
It had nothing to do with the eventual, highly dangerous referendum. But it did cement opposition to entering Phase 3 of the Euro, from which Lamont managed to get an exemption.
However Britains economy was debased by the strictures of phones 1 and 2 of the Single Currency by which we were bound.
October 13, 2025
It meant that there was formidable opposition to surrendering the £ for the Euro. That opposition was the reason that the referendum on the Euro was never called. A huge battle which we won in secret and the reason The United Kingdom still exists.
October 13, 2025
The crashing out of the ERM fiasco almost certainly did have an effect on both the outcome of the referendum and the fact that we even got one! It totally discredited the pro EURO pro EU people like Major, Cameron, Osborne… I also buried the tories for three terms and gave us the appalling Bliar and Brown who as Starkey puts it “did more damage than two world wars”!
October 14, 2025
Crashing out of the Euro was actually losing a bidding war with Soros, he who entrenched EU globalist ethos in every one of our £s he won against Major and spent, destroying us.
How did that help 25 years later?
October 13, 2025
And still today the pro EU platters continue to infest the party
There would not have been an immigration crisis if she was incharge and people like Macron would be firmly put back in their box.
The visceral hate of maggie by the left is proof that they hate Britain its culture and its history.
RIP Margaret Thatcher.
October 13, 2025
Morning Sir John,
Oh for a Maggie today!,
She was, in my opinion, the last Conservative Prime Minister we had.
The party, well the cabinet anyway, treated her badly and it was sad to see her tears as she left Downing Street.
Will there ever be another Maggie?
I can’t see it myself but will live in hope.
I like Kemi but, Maggie she is not.
The nearest to Maggie I’ve recently seen, is the new Respect MP for Runcorn and Helsby, Sarah Pochin.
October 13, 2025
Reform is what you meant, but Respect is also due to those who hold that banner.
October 13, 2025
Mt..
Oppps.. Don’t know what happened there… Mea Culpa.
October 13, 2025
A new ‘Thatcher’ does not need to be a woman.
Look for the character to test ideas before committing and using a Conservative yardstick to measure everything against.
October 13, 2025
Cliff. I perhaps felt some sympathy for her but no sadness for her tears as she was a victim of structures created by politicians like herself. I was made redundant from 2 jobs due to the policies at the time and had no time for tears whilst seeking another job.
October 13, 2025
But you could get another job!
The fake companies have to go to the wall. Look what happens when you tax the successful companies to keep the ghost companies afloat – you create more ghosts.
October 13, 2025
I suppose sympathy might extend if there was life left in the industries? Often closure of business, or painful restructuring is not directly due to PM policies! Alternative is a bailout – for how long?
October 13, 2025
Fascinating piece from someone who really knew her, at the centre of government. We could do with someone of her character and intelligence to save us now.
What of the Poll Tax, though? That seemed like a bad misjudgement of the British people’s love of “fairness”? Who were the big supporters and opponents?
Reply I advised against it
October 13, 2025
Politically clearly a mistake. They even gave benefits to poor people then tried to take it back of them in poll tax – idiotic!
October 13, 2025
It was a charge, not a tax.
I agreed with it, but Rodney also was against it.
October 14, 2025
A distinction with no real difference.
October 14, 2025
A VERY real difference! We don’t charge for a loaf of bread in proportion to your wealth. Bread has a price which is paid by all.
October 13, 2025
@Wanderer @Reply @LifeLogic – is tax based on ability to pay(as that was the proposal) really a mistake, misjudgement or just miss sold?
On benefits and the contribution would be less than a full time worker
October 13, 2025
The ‘Poll Tax’ (Community Charge) was fundamentally a sensible and fair policy. The problem was its immediacy and the resistance of people who did not pay Rates suddenly having to pay a more appropriate sum for the services they received. Had it been phased in more gently, that thin edge of the wedge could have prevented the thrust which led to her removal from office.
October 13, 2025
@Bloke – strange that even today people resist wanting to contribute anything when they are happy to be recipients of other endeavours. I could never see how contributing based on ability to pay was seen as such a downer
October 14, 2025
It was always going to be a disaster politically.
“the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing” The poll tax was the complete reverse of this!
October 14, 2025
It was NOT a tax. You have swallowed the renaming of the charge as a tax and in addition, one on which your right to vote depends.
October 15, 2025
Apparently, Margaret Thatcher slipped unintentionally to referring to it as ‘Poll Tax’ only once in the HoC.
However, tax is defined as: A compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government,
Irrespective of what it is called, it was still a cost to be paid.
October 13, 2025
There was nothing much wrong with the poll tax, it was fair in that everyone had to pay. And there lies the problem – the mouthy lazy lot didn’t want to pay and the government in my view gave in, in error. We ended up with Council Tax, one of the most unfair, regressive ways to tax that could be thought up. Why should an elderly couple on low pensions pay the same as a house of similar value with say 3 wage (possibly high) earners and several kids in it? They produce less waste, are probably more thoughtful, use the police and education less or not at all. Time for an updated Poll Tax fit for the time, which should be cheaper then the Council Tax.
October 13, 2025
@graham1946 +1
Noisy socialists at work
October 13, 2025
Agree with most of that.
October 13, 2025
They should have read about Wat Tyler and the Peasants’ Revolt against the original Poll Tax in 1381. History tends to repeat itself.
October 13, 2025
If they had prised a ‘poll tax’ I.e. a tax in order to get the vote, there would have been problems. However those determined to destroy Britain (look at the results of them having power) successfully remained the Community Charge, certainly in your mind.
October 13, 2025
@miami.mode – even the so-called ‘Boston Tea Party’ could be seen as similar, forced to pay taxes but denied a voice/vote
October 14, 2025
Who was denied a voice? Nobodies vote was at risk.
October 13, 2025
Happy Birthday Margaret Thatcher. I often imagine what Britain would be like today if the policies of the 1980s had persisted and were uninterrupted by Socialism and Conservative drift.
Some important ones I consider are: Britain would be cumulatively hundreds GBP billions better off without the diminished / puny growth rates since 2005; British labour productivity (output per worker) would be higher without the excessive labour supply via mass immigration, British living standards (GDP per capita) would be higher; the public sector would be efficient and the tax burden would have remained low for all; Society would have higher standards and it would be more self-assured.
There has been nothing ‘progressive’ since the abandonment of Thatcherism. Indeed, the subsequent policies have been ‘regressive’ in almost every way.
October 13, 2025
@Paul Freedman +1. It still amazes me that we have a Media that in search of profits(advertisers exposure) they resort to the Socialist Ideal to whip up a storm which is just ‘click-bait’ and as such it goes against the freedoms they want for themselves.
October 13, 2025
It amazes me as well that too many don’t do their job which is to be impartial and accurate in search of the truth.
You would think they would enjoy doing that but they prefer their private agendas instead.
October 13, 2025
Today we’re getting 1.8gw of wind electricity as high pressure is dominant over Europe. 76% of our generation is from fossil fuels and we are exporting 6% of that back to Norway. Can anyone else see the irony of this, we stop north sea exploration, import gas from Norway then export said power back to Norway at a loss.
Justcwhatvis going on.
October 13, 2025
Total Insanity and a further circa 5% coming for burning US forests chopped down and then imported on diesel ships, dried and then burnt at Drax (young coal in effect, but far worse than coal in efficiency). But this insanity supported not only by Ed Zealot Milibrain and Two Tier but also by Cameron, Moronic Net Zero May, the Boris/Carrie team, Sunak… and Kemi is still dithering and sitting on the fence!
October 13, 2025
Norway’s power generation is overwhelmingly dominated by clean energy, with hydropower accounting for over 90% of its electricity supply, supplemented by wind power. We are bringing in electricity via Interconnectors only to then supply some of it to Itreland and Norway. Shows the lunacy of our inadequate power policy.
October 13, 2025
And of course they are not grossly overpopulated and saved their North Sea income instead of blowing it on unemployment and the like. Now one of the richest countries in the world, while we……
October 13, 2025
Yep …Norway’s Wealth Fund contrast to our enormous and ever growing National Debt.
October 13, 2025
The irony that Norway is “heroic” in the use of renewable electricity plus electric cars but earns billions of NOKs from exporting North Sea oil.
October 13, 2025
It is very notable, Ian, that when you give us facts like these, Sakara Gold does not come on spouting his obsession with wind and solar or how rich he and Mrs Gold are due to Solar Panels.
October 13, 2025
@IAN WRAGG – the majority of the 650 MPs that voted this policy in, and refuse to budge or nudge it back into reality since, they all knew (and still know) what they were doing. Even if they personally did not have the knowledge, they had access to extremely well funded resources, proper peer review science and the OBR’s report stating they(these MPs) need to find an extra money of around £803 billion just to fund the direction they are taking the UK. As the UK’s Legislators they had everything to hand when they cast their vote, they knew the costs they were imposing on their electorate, their constituents, the nation. What sane person would vote in something they hadn’t thought through or reasoned the consequences of their actions? Today’s 650 MPs all own this £803 billion hit on the Nation – if they didn’t or don’t think that, they shouldn’t be in Parliament.
What we have is £1.24 Billion hit on the Nation for each MP, they have set out to cause this cost to the country on top of all the usual cost of running the State, security, health, education infrastructure and so on, now that is plus £803 billion.
It makes the Chancellors so-called ‘black hole’ look miniscule.
October 13, 2025
Thatcher was a true exponent of the famous Thomas Jefferson belief.
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance” it means maintaining liberty requires constant effort, attention, and a refusal to be complacent.
The current political operatives have not only forgotten that well proven truth they are actually actively operating to contain and constrain freedom in order to enforce control.
Thatcher was possibly the last PM to still have the political space to enact policies in favour of the national interest. Her demise was brought about by those pandering to the international groupings growing need for authority which was being advanced by the Un, the EU and domestically by the likes of Heseltine, Clarke and by a weak and willing recruit John Major. I am privileged to share a pint or two with one of Major’s so called Bastards every week.
As the years tick by the light of that era is dying. We must learn all we can while people like Sir John and others with honourable positions held back then, are still with us, still able to advise.
We will not see her calibre of leader again until the globalists have been rejected and the legal constructs they have built are dismantled.
October 13, 2025
@Rod Evans +1 thank you
October 13, 2025
We need to SELECT our own candidates. There are ‘Thatchers, Redwoods and Gills’ in the new generations, but our enemies have succeeded in keeping them out of Parliament.
October 13, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson +1 – its not a democracy when it is a gang leader in control of the gang they require to stroke their ego. Democracy only happens when the People have the control. Some will say we have elections. We have elections to choose the least worst option from the gangs that control those elections
October 13, 2025
Enemies? within or without? Or both?
October 13, 2025
Within.
October 13, 2025
Today we’re getting 1.8gw of wind electricity as high pressure is dominant over Europe. 76% of our generation is from fossil fuels and we are exporting 6% of that back to Norway. Can anyone else see the irony of this, we stop north sea exploration, import gas from Norway then export said power back to Norway at a loss.
Just what going on.
October 13, 2025
She is the only Prime Minister in my lifetime who, if she somehow returned, would get my vote.
The rest of them (from MacMillan onwards) have completely betrayed the British people and are complicit in the destruction of everything this country stood for in 1939.
October 13, 2025
Even the post war Churchill totally failed to undo the socialist welfare vandalism of Attlee. The country was already totally broke and needed Attlee’s socialism like a hole in the head. But then Churchill was very nearly 78 when he took office post war! Perhaps he should have given up alcohol like the youthful yet now 79 year old Trump!
October 13, 2025
Trump had not spent his lifeblood as Churchill had. He had gone through the war in the hot seat. It’s enough to burn any man out.
October 13, 2025
Indeed, especially with the addition of excessive alcohol!
October 14, 2025
Have you thought that that was the crutch that got him through? He had to hear of a lot of death and destruction of his own people, everyone in these islands was in serious peril. He had the full responsibility.
I could not have walked in his shoes for an hour, even a quiet hour.
October 13, 2025
Bridget Phillipson was on GBNews and other channels yesterday. I suppose she deserves credit for tuning up unlike the PM or other Ministers who are too frit as Thatcher might put it.
But what a dire person she is:-
She tried to claim credit for Starmer for the Gaze peace deal “we have played a key role” – the UK Government actually did the reverse by recognising Gaza – the US Ambassador said she was “deluded”. She said the government would be preventing anti-semitism in universities etc. I found Lammy, Two Tier Kier types the BBC, ITV, Ch4 were more like cheerleaders for antisemitism.
Then on her evil plan to kill private schools by making users pay four times over to use them she said words (to the effect) that in a market if people do not chose to buy private school services they will go bust! But dear it is a vastly tax rigged market made even more rigged by 20% VAT! Surely even a dim French & History Oxon. graduate can work this out.
You grab the taxes off people up front so most no longer have the ability to choose to take private education and they are forced to use the “free” state schools. Same with healthcare (with IPT replacing VAT). Appalling educational vandalism by this nasty spiteful government. A private school might be 25% better and 25% more efficient that the state school but it will go bust. The state one never will as it is subsidised by taxes on the users of the private one.
The plan is educational vandalism and it will not even raise any net tax after costs of more state places. Pure politics of envy evil from Bridget! The exact reverse is what is needed tax breaks to encourage far more to pay for their own children’s education! A fair unrigged market in education, healthcare, housing, banking, transport…
October 13, 2025
Fair unrigged markets in education, healthcare, housing, banking, transport… please! But this was not even delivered by Thatcher though you could get some tax breaks for private healthcare and there was no IPT medical insurance tax then! Zero attempts to deliver this since Thatcher yet it would save the state sector money to do this as more would pay for themselves!
October 13, 2025
@LL – today’s media headlines ‘Labour ‘delusional’ for claiming UK was key player in Gaza peace deal
October 13, 2025
Steve Witkoff ‘I would like to acknowledge the vital role of the United Kingdom in assisting and coordinating efforts that have led us to this historic day in Israel. … In particular I want to recognise the incredible input and tireless efforts of National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell.’ 13/10/2025.
October 13, 2025
I watched an interesting video on YouTube – search ‘Modern Teens Take 1950s Exams… And FAIL’
These teens had just written GCSE and received exemplary results. They did one month of the1950’s syllabus and wrote 3 exams on what was covered in that month. They failed 50% outright and scraped passes, only one girl got As.
The most enlightening comment was from an ‘educator’ at the end who said dropping standards had ‘made education available to all’. He denied that all children in the 1950s went to school and wrote the exams. A blatant lie.
Worth a watch. I don’t know how our children are going to compete.
October 13, 2025
Could do with a repeat of a Channel 4 programme from some years ago when a bunch of students, some months prior to their GSCEs, were subjected to an experiment where they were introduced to a 1950s-type grammar school education. At the outset they were given a written paper and thinking it was an old GCE paper agreed it wasn’t particularly easy only to be told afterwards that it was a 1950s 11 plus.
October 13, 2025
I read Maths & Physics at Cambridge, taking my Maths O level a year early, the Additional Maths A/O at 16, Maths A levels at 17 and Further Maths at 18 as several at my Grammar School did. At the time I got the top grades. But I looked back at the O/A paper a few years back and even thatclook rather tricky to my more addled brain (in the time available). Certainly far more demanding than my children’s Maths O levels and A levels!
I have even seen inaccurate/duff/erroneous set questions with rather serious errors in recent physics papers!
Reply Why go on so much about people’s school record? Most of us learn ,gain experience and develop after leaving school. I try to learn something new every day so I have something different to say on this diary. I do not think the fact that I took O level maths at 14 and Additional Maths at 15 tells you anything interesting about me and my views.
October 14, 2025
To reply well yes to a degree I agree and to a degree it does – as I said before the type of people that choose these subjects are often/usually rather different to those who choose to drop these subjects at 16.
Note also the huge gender difference at A levels with subjects like Physics, Engineering, Further Maths, Computer Studies being circa 80% male and yet modern languages often being early 80% female. Also universities are becoming almost 60% female and 40% male overall quite some disparity here!
Some logic here as women are far less likely to have to pay the fees back on average. This is due to lower earnings, more part time working and more career breaks.
October 14, 2025
I imagine JR you are both very bright and fairly well balanced between sciences and arts but many are not. So perhaps this explains the view you take.
You can try to explain mathematical or physics concepts to some bright (in many ways) art graduates but they can simply never grasp them. Things like probability for example, entropy, or interpretation of statistics. Nor often are they even remotely interested in trying to. This is why concepts like Climate Change get such traction it is a religion all emotion and little rational logic. Often they are even actually proud of this lack ability.
Some people from the DoT proudly put on their web site that walking and cycling produce no direct or indirect CO2 per mile! Are they deluded art graduates with no science past 15, morons or just liars! Or religious believers who think with their guts or emotions!
October 13, 2025
Plus she made a rather poor attempt to justify the clearly political ditching of the spying for China prosecutions. So come one come all for spying for China now I assume.
October 13, 2025
@Lifelogic – the tragic 2TK has to go AWOL to avoid being the one to blame. His camaraderie with the World’s despots is his home
October 14, 2025
Indeed we have seen many appalling PMs but Two Tier is certainly doing his best to be an even larger despot!
October 14, 2025
Indeed Kahn running away to a Climate bash in Rio too, rather than deal with the appalling mess he has made of lawless, filthy London.
October 13, 2025
Just a couple of thoughts about Mrs Thatcher:
When Arthur Scargill decided to use the miners as a tool to remove the Conservative government, he failed to understand who he was taking on. That whole often violent insurrection failed. It failed to defeat the government and it failed the miners. How ironic that the Left who championed Scargill in his battle against the government, now hate the very thought of coal. Fossil fuel being used to produce energy ! No thanks.
When Galtieri invaded the Falkland islands in an attempt to divert the attention of the Argentinian people from his murderous behaviour at home. He failed to understand who he was taking on. While the Left said we should not attempt to liberate our own territory, Mrs Thatcher got on and did the job.
She was a political giant, the like of which we have never seen again, and I suspect never will.
October 13, 2025
She was far better than all the others of the past 60 odd years but all the others were truly appalling. True she was restricted by all her wets and the blob at the time – but she made very many errors. So much socialism, red tape, excessive government, excessive tax, rigged markets, EU rule & other lunacy remained when she was ditched by the dire Major and her own MPs. She even fell for Climate Alarmism at one point!
October 13, 2025
She did a lot of great things but failed to invest North Sea Oil in helping to create UK’s Silicon Valley and to help develop North of England. Much of North is like a wasteland that costs tax payers in South billions and billions. And UK as world’s second Silicon Valley would have deepened and strengthened our economy.
Reply You love exhibiting your ignorance. Policy unleashed huge investment in telecoms and computing, in combined cycle gas power generation and in modern transport technology, the AI of the age.
October 13, 2025
The Tories did lots of great things for High Tech. I’m just saying more could have been done (like was done in the USA to help Silicon Valley and in Israel to help Tel Aviv).
Most people in the High Tech industry – including Conservatives – would agree with me.
October 13, 2025
Not so. Have you been to Bletchley? In the name of God go and learn something!
Anyone who want a handout is not confident in their own ability. They accept constraints associated with the handout. These are not successful people.
October 13, 2025
And from the North Of England: the Government gives us £9 back for every £10 we pay in tax. Of course it takes the money from people who know how to invest it and give it to State Authorities who squander it.
The North of England, once the richest area of the whole world, does not need help from the south. We just need them to get off our backs!
October 13, 2025
That’s a complete straw man. Never said the South should be giving money to the North.
October 13, 2025
We just need them off our backs – that is true in all of the country!
October 13, 2025
Ed M may well come up with much ‘Thought for the Day’ nonsense.
However the North is now a wasteland after Thatcher. Most of the oil revenues frittered away trying to defeat the unions.
All the those big companies kept people employed. To use a thought for the day phrase ‘the devil makes work for idle hands’.
Thatcher was originally ‘Thatcher the milk snatcher’. The hagiography glosses over too much.
October 13, 2025
@Peter,
‘Thought for the Day’ nonsense’ – Careful! Lady Thatcher was a Christian person. As was Jane Austen (she wrote a wonderful prayer book). And Sir Isaac Newton (Bible scholar). Faraday. Maxwell. Handel. Shakespeare most likely when you look at the Tempest. Tolkien. As were the people who founded Oxford, Cambridge, Grammar Schools, our medieval Cathedrals and churches, Guilds, Work Ethic, Focus on family over state, Monarchy. Parliament. And so forth.
And everyone who writes comments are writing a ‘Thought for the Day’ at end of day whether theist, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Zoroastrian Fire-eater and the rest.
October 14, 2025
@Peter,
Lastly, we need people standing up for our Christian heritage (not the same as proselytising). Our whole culture and civilisation (including politics) depends on it (and lots of atheists would agree).
If not, then our Christian heritage will disappear and the loss of that to our culture and civilisation – whilst, at the same time, Islam becomes more and more dominant as a religion in our country – and influencing our culture in general.
October 14, 2025
Lastly, besides great Christian heroes such as Cyrus the Great (from Old Testament) and Jane Austen the represent the best of Western culture and civilisation, can’t forget the great BACH. His beautiful music that sums up the music of Western Culture and Civilisation at its best (order, beauty, harmony). And Bach, a devout Christian man who devoted all his music to God.
Google: ‘Bach – Gloria in excelsis Deo BWV 191 – Van Veldhoven | Netherlands Bach Society’ (the first part – just out of this world).
And we have to fight for our Christian heritage and values (not the same as proselytising) – The future of our great country and Western Culture and Civilisation – including politics – vitally depends upon it.
October 13, 2025
John stop it…instead of being rude to people who respect you, try focusing on the potential anti British harm that Starmer says he wants and the fiscal tangles Blair created .
October 14, 2025
The biggest harm is downgrading our children and expecting so little of them. It results in grown men who know nothing but who aspire to represent us in our Parliament, like Ed.
He needs to read this site and learn instead of lecturing and sometimes actually chiding JR.
I know who should stop it.
October 13, 2025
Britain throws up political giants with monotonous regularity.
Thatcher said Powell was the greatest parliamentarian she had ever known.
Majors ‘Bastards’ were magnificent fighters.
Redwood and the rest of the Spartans won a critical victory as a minority.
We need to get more of these people into Parliament.
October 13, 2025
We need more than parliamentarians whatever that really means. Rather, we need people with real down-to-earth, pragmatic, entrepreneurial business, leadership experience (although Mrs T a great stepping stone towards that)
Reply Lady Thatcher never ran a business. It is possible for MPs to lead well as she showed. I saw several business leaders brought into government, only to fail to understand how different it is working with an independent civil service rather than with your own hand picked business team who look to you for pay and promotion.
October 13, 2025
I’m a great supporter of Lady Thatcher. But I’m saying, we still need to try and attract more people into the Tory Party with good, down-to-earth, business experience and leadership. I think most Tories (and Reform) would agree with me. Problem is we’re not doing enough.
October 13, 2025
Most conservatives are not member of that party. We don’t want party machines choosing our candidates. They have proven beyond a shadow of doubt, that the6 are useless at it.
Reform is also useless at it.
Stop telling the true Sovereigns, the People, what to do.
October 13, 2025
You don’t know what a Parliamentarian even means? Really? But you expect British people to vote for you so you can ‘give it a go’?
What do you mean by ‘giving it a go’? What do you think the job of an MP entails?
October 13, 2025
@Lynn,
Like I said before, I’m NOT trying for Parliament until I succeed in business in the way I want (enough to prove that I am a really successful entrepreneur and business leader). If not, then I’m not going to waste people’s time trying for Parliament. But IF I succeed there, then I would focus on everything else (i.e. to become the best parliamentarian one can). I think most Tories would agree that’s the best approach. Good experience outside Parliament before trying for Parliament.
And IF I succeed, I would sure focus on researching and trying to emulate the best of Lady Thatcher, Heseltine (I disagree with him over Europe), Sir John and other Tories.
For God, Family, King, Country and the Conservative Party!
October 14, 2025
Ed, Hestletine is by no stretch of the imagination, a Tory. Never was! He still rages against any tory policy proposed.
Why do you end every comment with ‘I think most people/conservatives/etc would agree with me? What makes you think that bolsters your argument?
You need to work out what is RIGHT even if ‘most people do not agree with you’, and develop arguments supporting your ideas which you deploy to persuade people who disagree with you initially to change their minds.
That is what Parliament is all about. Indeed, that is what life is all about.
October 14, 2025
Did she not help out at her dad’s Green Grocers perhaps?
October 14, 2025
She did not run the business. Her Dad was also the Mayor and an esteemed Councillor in Grantham.
October 13, 2025
With the greatest respect to Sir John, Margaret Thatcher was an extremely divisive prime minister. Her policies caused the worst recession in this country since the 1930’s. Three million people lost their jobs within two years of her taking power and along with her successor John Major, she managed to destroy the industrial base of this country so thoroughly that we have never had a balance of payments surplus since. And don’t forget the sewage.
The end result of Thatcher/Major’s management of the economy is the humungous national debt, now at £2.6 TRILLION, paying the interest is bankrupting us.
Many communities in the mining, steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, car manufacturing and other heavy exporting industries in the North do not remember Thatcher with pleasure. Quite the opposite
I remember the poll tax riots, selling off profitable state industries to foreigners, wasting the N Sea oil revenues on tax cuts for the rich, the police fighting the miners with truncheons, the IRA hunger strikers and her grating voice lecturing us “there is no alternative”
Reply Biased bile. The Labour government de industrialised us in the 1070s and left Margaret Thatcher a bankrupt state with high inflation. Most of the current high debt was borrowed this century, not in the 1980s. We would love to get anywhere hear the growth rate she achieved
October 13, 2025
What a load of sewage. You dismiss the unions who undermined all industrial business, and those where the raw material was unprofitably clearly running out. ‘Everybody out’ was the call – short memories? or no memories?
October 13, 2025
It’s the CONsensus Uni-Party policies of the last 30 or so years (Blair/Brown onwards) which has landed us with £2.9 trillion of debt.
It has also destroyed what passed for democracy in the UK; ruined our social cohesion and, according to Prof David Betz, has created the conditions for a future civil war.
October 13, 2025
@Reply, you forgot the Unions tried to hold a gun to the Taxpayers head saying give us the money. Thatcher just said what will you do to earn that money? the response was once again do what we say, pay up or else. The Unions ‘smashed’ themselves on their own personal Political ego, sacrificing a lot of hard working people
October 13, 2025
SG:
How strange, I thought from your previous posts promoting Net Zero, “clean” energy relying on imported turbines and solar panels from China and the decarbonisation of the UK through de-industrialisation, that you were in favour of closing all the big CO2 emitters such as the “mining, steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, car manufacturing and other heavy exporting industries”? Cakeism as Professor Sir Dieter Helm might say.
October 13, 2025
The ‘humungous national debt’ was nothing to do with Thatcher but the Tories since 2010. As a reminder, in 2010 the debt was around 8oo billion, 14 years of the Tories saw it go to 2 trillion, so they have nothing to say on economics. Even allowing for 400 billion due to Covid which the Tories love to shout about, that was miniscule compared to the rest of the waste they made.
October 13, 2025
You cannot conflate Mrs Thatcher’s Government with that of John Major.
Mrs Thatcher paid off our war debt with the increased tax take lower taxes delivered.
Kinnock complained that when he knocked on doors in Ebbw Vale ‘offering to save you brothers, from poverty, they told him they were just off to their holiday homes in Marbella’. It’s on record in his conference speech! That is what Conservatism did for the poorest and most Marxist regions!
Scargill and his Marxist war killed off the mining industry.
Mrs Thatcher was never defeated by the people in fact the numbers voting for her Governments increased at each election. You can argue that she won a 4th election, for Major by supporting him.
At one election where I was sub-Agent, in Poole, we received returns from the polling booths where people were joyfully and overwhelmingly telling our tellers that they had voted Conservative yet by 10am we had hardly crossed off any of our pledged voters.
It dawned on me then that this was a landslide and I was able to tell John Butterfill at 10.00am that he had a landslide, and that if Poole was a landslide, the country was also a landslide.
The people LOVED and LOVE Conservatism!
We should try it again.
October 14, 2025
The UK’s WW2 debt took 61 years to be paid back with the last instalment in December 2006. The reimbursement of the WW1 debt took longer and finished in March 2015.
October 13, 2025
“We would love to get anywhere hear the growth rate she achieved” indeed and we could do so easily do this – Just ditch net zero, the. frack, drill, mine, a huge bonfire of red tape and quangos, get judges to act in the national interests, cut and simplify taxes hugely, halve the size of the state, stop all the rigged markets – energy, education, healthcare, transport, housing… stop paying healthy people to not to work, high skilled legal immigration only, police and justice that deters real crimes rather than tweet, scrap two tier justice… alas zero political will for this.
October 13, 2025
Labour usually works on the basis that the worse the economic mess they leave the better. This so the next government get the blame as they try to sort out the appalling mess. Kier and Reeves seem set on this already. Though in 2024 Sunak’s fake Tories left a huge mess having borrowed vast sums (over £1 Trillion) largely spent doing net harm on Covid “Vaccines”, test and trace, duff PPE, lockdowns, HS2, net zero lunacy, renewable subsidies, mass low skilled immigration, road blocking, EV subsidies, OTT red tape, a bloated state, duff healthcare, no deterrent policing…
October 13, 2025
Mrs Thatcher did many great things. Today is a day to celebrate what she got right.
October 13, 2025
Everything. Pity you don’t know enough to innumerate what she got right in the face of serious opposition, mostly from the anarchists and the wets in her own party.
Sometime she failed, but if she had had more time or had secured the succession, Conservatism would have remained triumphant.
October 13, 2025
Enumerate, not innumerate, is the appropriate word above.
People in glass houses etc.
October 14, 2025
I’m not perfect. But I know which way is up.
October 13, 2025
She did more for the rich and corporate companies and very little to help most ordinary people. The right to buy helped many but has caused rents to rise due to lack of social housing today.
Reply Selling homes to their tenants does not cut the supply of homes! It freed capital to build new social homes.
October 13, 2025
Curtesy of AI.
Homes lost through the Right to Buy scheme have not been replaced on a one-for-one basis, leading to a major and persistent decline in the UK’s social housing stock. The failure to replace sold homes is a key factor in the UK’s ongoing housing crisis.
While some new affordable housing has been built, the numbers have consistently fallen far short of the rate of homes sold under the policy.
History of replacement efforts and policy changes
Initial policy (1980): When Right to Buy was introduced, councils were not required to replace the homes they sold. They were permitted to keep only a portion of the sales proceeds, which was often directed toward paying down debt rather than building new housing.
Replacement pledge (2012): The coalition government pledged to replace properties sold under an expanded Right to Buy scheme on a “one-for-one” basis. However, this commitment only applied to sales exceeding the average yearly sales prior to 2012, and replacement construction has consistently been below the target.
Recent replacement rates: As of 2023/24, the gap between homes sold and new social homes delivered continues to widen. One analysis found a net loss of 650 social homes in that year alone. Sales have consistently outpaced new builds almost every year since 1981.
New government measures (2025): The current Labour government has confirmed new reforms to limit the depletion of social housing. New rules state that newly built social housing will be exempt from Right to Buy for 35 years. The government will also allow councils to keep 100% of sales receipts from 2026/27 onwards, which can be combined with grant funding to build new homes.
The consequences of lost housing stock
The failure to replace social housing has created several negative impacts:
Rising waiting lists: Social housing waiting lists have surged, leaving over a million households waiting for a home. Some projections suggest this figure could reach two million within a decade.
Increased private renting: A significant portion of the homes bought through Right to Buy have ended up in the private rental sector. Estimates show that over 40% of former council homes are now being privately rented, often at significantly higher rates.
Exacerbated housing crisis: The policy has diminished the supply of truly affordable social housing, pushing more people into the less secure and more expensive private rental market. This has put a severe strain on housing budgets and contributed to the wider housing crisis.
Higher costs for taxpayers: Because many households can no longer access affordable social housing, the government has to spend more on housing benefits to subsidise private landlords, rather than investing in new public housing.
Reply You miss the main obvious point. When someone bought their rented house the same people carried on living in the same house so there was no reduction in housing stock and a transfer if demand of one family from buying to owning. Councils could build a new house with the proceeds of sale unless they needed to repay debts incurred to build and own the house.
October 14, 2025
And aftere death?
October 14, 2025
Then their children inherited a house in which to live and did not need to go cap in hand to the Council.
October 14, 2025
Reply.It has been reported that there’s a 30% loss in council houses.Do you honestly think that councils will buy back the houses or save and invest in new council houses.The councils dont build odd houses here and there.They build..if ever..in job lots.
Reply It doesnt matter if there are fewer Council homes because there are more home owners. Selling a home to a tenant planning to carry on living there does not reduce the supply of homes!
October 13, 2025
She left a lot of wreckage behind and was not loved by everyone – She shared some of the downsides to her character that we see today with President Trump?
October 13, 2025
I suppose you could define John Major as ‘wreckage’ and indeed she did leave him behind.
I can’t think of anything else.
Nobody is loved by everyone. The chancers, wide-boys, shysters and frauds hated Thatcher. That is the sure measure of her success.
October 14, 2025
My mother disliked her greatly for. Mining closures and selling off of British Gas etc.
I think that privatisation went too far.Its misconceived to try and justify selling off assets and pretending that there’s no loss in national power.Its purely a deliberate foy on the way to extending the EU.
October 14, 2025
You mean your mother was against the people owning these assets and wanted them concentrated in the hands of politicians who had not put any of their own money into them?
Do you think she was right?
Did you mothers like Mr Scargill? Only because of his actions the Miner’s Union is now even having to sell it’s country house just off the A1.
October 13, 2025
Compared to every Prime Minister who followed Margaret Thatcher she was a giant. Possessed of a first class mind coupled with clarity of purpose and determination she provided essential leadership to rebuild our country after years of failure under Labour. The battle with Arthur Scargill did enormous damage to many mining communities still felt today as indeed did the imposition of a Poll Tax in Scotland. Certainly the latter was a substantial failure of policy and I wonder whether it was necessary to inflict so much damage to our coal mining industry? Certainly her forced resignation was a disgrace. Regrettably, we’ll not see her like again.
October 13, 2025
I think we need to be careful of putting her on a pedestal (yuck). She was no Cyrus the Great (and he was flawed too). But she still did many great things not forgetting how UK was in tatters after 1970’s socialistic politics.
October 13, 2025
Mrs Thatcher looks down on Cyrus the Great. But Ed nice-but-dim has no knowledge of that or of her achievements or the overwhelming success of Conservatism, proven in the Thatcher interlude.
You should try reading something other than the Guardian. Go on – have a bash – tr6 a book by Nicholas Ridley, Sir Alfred Sherman or John Redwood.
Find out what Conservatism is! You will be astonished!
October 13, 2025
‘Mrs Thatcher looks down on Cyrus the Great’
– Nonsense!
Napoleon, Caesar and Alexander the Great all looked up to him!
Lady Thatcher was humble enough to recognise he was a great leader.
Reply When and where did Margaret praise Cyrus? She never mentioned him to me in our many long policy and speech writing discussions.
October 14, 2025
But she wouldn’t have looked down on Cyrus the Great as Lynn said that’s my point. Why would she? Doesn’t make sense.
Reply I do not think she ever thought about Cyrus
October 14, 2025
Ed, Cyrus established a vicious dictatorship, he established the ‘Immortals’, deployed by his son Darius who was beaten by Greeks with a far smaller force. Then his grandson Xerxes tried again invading Greece and burning Athens twice! But the Greeks beat Xerxes both on land and sea, though vastly outnumbered.
The real hero is Themistocles who wrote two letters in the heat of battle and fooled the Persian King first to halve his fleet and then to withdraw from the field himself taking a massive force with him.
I can’t remember the names of the battles, but the hero is obvious.
It’s the democrat not the ‘King of Kings’.
October 14, 2025
Lynn,
‘Darius’ etc
Cyrus was no Liberal Democrat! Things were very much different back then. Life much harsher. We shouldn’t judge the ancients 100% by our POV from today.
The important thing he was considered ANNOINTED or holy by the Jews and so by the Christians too (not forgetting how Cyrus the Great was a great hero to Napoleon, Caesar and Alexander the Great. They just loved him).
Your argument about Darius would be quickly thrown out by a court of Law. As you’re falling into the fallacious argument of guilt by association. Like saying Marcelius Aurelias was an awful emperor because his son Commodious was a villain.
October 14, 2025
Ed Cyrus was considered a God on earth. Mrs Thatcher and any other Christian would not have accepted such a claim for him or his successors, who also claimed to be Gods. No Christian would admire such people even if they were not cruel beyond comprehension, demanding everyone prostrate themselves before them.
Pericles lived in the same era. Read a bit of his wisdom. His father (named after a white horse, can’t remember his name) ‘stood’ at Marathon and in the treacherous sea battle against the Persians.
This has nothing to do with the era, it has everything to do with what we call civilization. The Greeks strove to refine democracy.
We still plough that furrow.
October 13, 2025
The fact that you, someone so young with so much promise and talent, were left languishing on the back benches for decades shows what a dreadful party the Tories are and why no one should vote for them. As then, it is still full of self-serving backstabbers.
October 13, 2025
No it’s full of limited people trying to hide their limitations by suppressing the gifted.
Farage does the same. Always has done.
October 13, 2025
Sir John
Well articulated and a much needed reminder of not just what Thatcher and thatcherism was, but also a reminder how Parliament the majority of its 650 MPs have lost the plot. She first set out to create frameworks for everyone to flourish and reach their potential. Please keep repeating it…
Parliament today is to polarised, it has forgotten democracy, it has forgotten it is there to defend democracy it is hung up on political ideology and being on message with noisy minorities – as such has lost its purpose. The HoC will fight the People not work with them, they will hold People back not release them, they discriminate were ever possible to restrain advancement and prosperity. They curtail any and every morsel of ‘freedoms’ on any pretence however well meaning – never thinking it through, taking on the bigger picture. From the outside looking in and hearing all the speeches you do not see any signs of a conservative or someone standing up for the UK anywhere in the HoC.
She embody what we think being a Conservative is, ‘enabling’ everyone to reach their potential and not being dictated too by political religious freaks.
Sir John, where I am at odds with yourself and I respect your loyalty to what calls it self the Conservative Party, to me there is no sign of a Conservative left in Parliament. Lots of closet Socialist, Liberal Democrats but not one ounce of conservatism raising its head anywhere.
Reply Try reading the Leader of the Opposition’s speech to Conference
October 13, 2025
footnote; my Father was one of the footsoldiers getting out with the message on the doors when Margaret Thatcher first tried to become an MP and that was in Kent. A day out for me was to sit quietly at the back of a meeting room in Smith Square
October 13, 2025
IB:
I agree. I believe Parliament and the Parliamentary parties are now full of career politicians with single track ideas and unable to see, comprehend or analyse the bigger picture and weigh up the benefits and disadvantages of particular polices. Hence, for instance their decision for the country to net zero its CO2 emissions to save the planet whatever the cost (which is why it was never considered necessary to cost it). Ensconced in their bubble they’ve all succumbed to Robert Conquest’s second and third laws of politics.
October 13, 2025
The outstanding thing, for me, about Margaret Thatcher is the sheer determination of character she needed to get her agenda through, against the ‘Establishment’ opposition on all sides of the House of Commons, the Civil Service, and the country at large. That is made very clear in all biographies of her that I have read, in particular the three volume work by Charles Moore, and it is what sets her far apart from any modern politician. People may not have liked her, but they still voted for her because they respected her, and would have continued to do so.
October 13, 2025
Further to “Her first two years were too dependent on Treasury and Bank orthodoxy to the cost of the country’s economy”, I was astonished to hear Margaret Thatcher say sometime after leaving office that she did not have a majority in Cabinet during her first term in favour of the economic policy she was pursuing.
I am also astonished now learning “I usually had a weekly one to one for half an hour to discuss the agenda and forward look” – how come you two only needed thirty minutes a week to decide what was required to keep the country on track?
She was a proper prime minister, knowing what she wanted to do and providing direction and leadership. We could do with her like again.
October 13, 2025
She said she needed only 10 on her side (in Cabinet) but only ever had 6.
They needed only 30 minutes because no words were wasted.
October 13, 2025
Excellent article Sir John and unless you lived as an adult during Mrs Thatcher ‘s time many would not have appreciated how she woke up not just Britain but also the world, especially USA and communist Russia with her no nonsense common sense, based on her humble roots in a grocers shop in Grantham.
Personally I owe her a great deal as it allowed many like me to be self employed giving freedom to self achievement and pursuit of new radical technology changes similar to that found in Silicon valley, California!
It was like day and night because the old world thinking needed challenging being superseded by fast moving change that you Sir John and Mrs Thatcher recognised ahead of many. You managed to turn the country from a basket case labelled “The sick man of Europe” to the strongest economy since WW2.
We owe you and Mrs T a great debt indeed.
There are many detractors and she warned of the danger of the enemy within.
She broke through the glass ceiling for women worldwide and big-time too.
Quite a legacy challenging the old boy’s clubs to deliver and walk the talk.
Europe knows her a “Margaret ( I want my money back) Thatcher” especially France. Her ” No, No, No” echoes forever to EU nonsense. Marvellous Maggie!
October 13, 2025
Her Methodist background was also key to who she was. Problem now is we are living more and more in a godless world which leads to more narcissism and selfishness in politics, business and life in general. Like rats destroying a house (the UK / Western World / Western Civilisation).
October 13, 2025
Agreed!
October 14, 2025
Yes she never had to talk about any fake “Moral compass” as Gordon Brown and Labour so often as she followed her own conscience forged in the Methodist tradition. She was a star role model Conservative.
October 15, 2025
Huckleberry Finn, the Artful Dodger, Sam Weller and Oscar Wilde all personalities. Unique. Characters (flawed too). Personality / uniqueness / character is a GIFT from God! But that must also be conformed to the will of God Who knows best. Anti-religion destroys personality and other religions diminish it. Humour (Dad’s Army versus the humourlessness of the Nazis) is key to personality, too, and humour is divine. Isaac means ‘one who laughs.’ The Jews understand well the humour of the OT (no wonder so many great Jewish comedians – in their bones). Sadly, Christians often don’t (the humour of the OT). And when Christ said, ‘be like little children’ he was partly tapping into the Jewish understanding of healthy playfulness (and lover of life) that we see in the OT. But the Bible also challenges us to be warriors (in ever sense where appropriate), wise men, healers (and peace makers and unifiers) and kings too – real leaders (as do modern secular psychologists such as the great Carl Jung). This is all vital to the health (mental too) and wealth of Western culture and civilisation.
October 13, 2025
Thanks John what a great Lady
October 13, 2025
Those most in need of information on the Thatcher Governments are in the current Conservative Party. They are lost!
October 13, 2025
I look back on the excitement of those Thatcher years and the rising hopes and opportunities which I saw opening up year by year, notably on the day when Chancellor Lawson totally reorganised and simplified the tax system.
The suffocation of the nation’s enterprise by trade union dominance was gradually unchoked.
I was young then, building my practice (with no tax payer money to support me, and no advertising allowed in my profession), all I needed was relief from burdens of government tax and regulation. I had four young children and a wonderfully supportive wife and the sun shone us by virtue of the amazing changes wrought by those ‘divisive’ Thatcher measures.
I fully appreciate and applaud the brilliant work by yourself, Sir John, truly monumental in concept and delivery, in making those times so special and a model for other countries around the world.
The ‘divisive’ part of her office tenure was between those who saw and appreciated the benefits of her achievements and those who had still to awaken to them or were so deranged by their success.
Increased majorities at her elections surely carried a message to that effect.
I had seen The Real Thing.
It was the very best in British politics with a brilliant and courageous leader and, in Sir John Redwood, a supporter who established a strong and durable scaffolding to enable the tower to be built. That scaffolding endures now with the unwavering uncorroding and incorruptible integrity of its architect.
Sadly it all slowly unravelled in the hands of the Lady’s far less adroit successors.
Currently, with an open goal gaping, Kemi is infuriatingly playing for time dribbling out to the corner flag.
Playing for time is a tactic for a team which is in the lead, not one which is desperate to get back in the game.
October 13, 2025
Well spoken and congratulations. Pray the lord for another Thatcher in Farage.
October 13, 2025
I was employed by Kema Nobel designing process and production systems for Abattoirs and meat processing factories. I was on their stand at the annual Meat Trades Fair in Frankfurt towards the end of Mrs T’s first term.
A man from Australia looked at our systems and then asked if Mrs Thatcher would win the next election. There was shaking of heads and muttering from those Swedes manning the stand. I said that she absolutely would win. She HAD to for all of us and that we would fight for that win. The Australian looked at me, nodded and then placed an order – with me!
So the Swedish branch lost the sale which came from our branch in England.
We all did well under Conservatism and a Leader who was respected by the movers and shakers of the whole world, from my Australian butcher to Reagan and Gorbachev.
October 14, 2025
back then I would often travel on work to California and Milwaukie. Sometimes in evening meal company it would turn to politics. One memorable one was when Mrs T got discussed. I said something along the lines of her being a blast of fresh air after what had gone before. A prominent VP claimed ‘we’d swap ours for her at a drop of a dime’ or such. Everybody instantly joined in agreeing.
October 14, 2025
+1 and ‘theirs’ was Reagan, who was not half bad.
October 13, 2025
Starmer managed to get through almost the whole game by juggling the ball in the air next to the corner flag.
Then just as the whistle was about to be blown his opposition all walked away from their goalmouth and his rabble team put the ball in the net.
October 13, 2025
Richard Tice said this morning that Reform is abandoning its manifesto pledge of £90bn in tax cuts. So how is Farage going to make £350bn worth of spending cuts over the course of next Parliament?
October 13, 2025
I am all in favour of digging Maggie up, strapping her to a horse in the style of El Cid, and sending her into parliament
She will still outclass all of the current senior politicians in parliament now, even in her current state
October 13, 2025
Margaret Thatcher was the only PM in living memory to heed Enoch Powell’s advice about the ratchet effect of socialism, and set about dismantling and then reversing that ratchet. Her less than glorious Conservative successors have preferred to manage the legislative and financial infrastructure left behind by their socialist predecessors. Shame on them.
Today, the ratchet that has rusted in place may need to be dynamited and rebuilt in order to entrench capitalism and freedom. Who is most up to that task?
October 13, 2025
The glory of a ratchet is that if you flick the switch, it ratchets in the opposite direction.
October 13, 2025
000 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 12th October from France…As at 5pm the government hasn’t released any figures on their website
October 14, 2025
Still no update as at 9am 14th October
October 14, 2025
Born just 5 months after our host, I am a pupil of Thatcher.
Contraversally, I regard her as our greatest 20th-21st century Prime Minister, although, frankly, her only competition was Churchill. She faced a country in hoc to the unions and a business community which was largely complacent and happy to rely on the efforts and wealth generated by past industrialists. She changed all that, which was a remarkably difficult achievement.
On the international stage, she dominated Europe and was a worthy partner to Ronald Reagan in defeating the Soviet Union.
Compared with Margaret, nobody else comes even close, not even Blair. Indeed, since Blair, our leadership has been a disaster, and has become progressively worse. We can only hope that Farage and Tice can rise to the challenge. Neither Labour or the Conservatives, despite Badenoch’s conference speech, inspire any confidence whatsoever.
October 15, 2025
The EU again was the cause and will be the cause of the downfall of any other person who tries to rule this country for, and by, the people. When will they learn? Perhaps another type of education system would help but I cannot see it happening. She has been ridiculed whilst in office and out but her flame will not die and she will be remembered long after the mini examples of humans who have followed her and those who are still alive who tried everything in their power to extinguish her (Heseltine comes to mind here).