Simon Jones: All Conservatives say they are Thatcherites, so why do we not agree what that means?

Simon Jones is a freelance consultant advising on business strategy. He has had 30 years involved in Conservative politics having being a parliamentary candidate, district councillor, special advisor, constituency and Essex area chairman.

It might be a revelation, but every one of the current 120 Conservative MPs believes that they are Thatcherite. From the newest intake to the longest-serving member, the ideological hero remains the same.

Yet while Thatcherism is the common inheritance and each MP appears to be reading from the same book, yet they clutch onto a different chapter of the legacy – sometimes without reference to the rest of the book.

The result: a party aligned by the spirit of Thatcher, but fractured. And lets be honest, strong oppositions have to be united and invest time in holding the government to account.

There have been some notable breakthrough moments during the last few weeks building pressure that has resulted in a series of u-turns. Yet there is a long way to go to translate parliamentary tempo into cut through to the public.

That moment must happen before the next general election. Given the inability of the Labour Party so far to grapple the public spending challenges, and Reform and the Liberal Democrats demands on fiscal measures, there is a space opening up for the Conservate Party to connect with business and with workers.

The greatest lesson from Sir Keir Starmer’s victory last year, was to actually have a narrative that can be bought into, not just for the easy decisions, but for the difficult ones as well.  This is something that Margaret Thatcher broadly got right in her time in office.

The Conservative Party today may be fluent in Thatcherism, but it has forgotten how to tell its own story. Every MP can quote the gospel; privatisation, aspiration, individual liberty. But few can articulate what comes next. The legacy is fixed; the modern narrative is not.

When it comes to the current intake age, intake, and lived experience shape which slice of Thatcherism each MP chooses to elevate.

For some, she is the crusader for individual aspiration and lower taxes; for others, she is the iron-willed reformer who took on vested interests and won. Many today cite the revolutionary approach she took to understanding the global environmental challenges and her ability to stand up for British interests in Europe. A younger MP might invoke her as the slayer of the state, while an older hand might speak wistfully of monetarism and financial discipline or the first green policies.

It would be a huge surprise if a single Tory MP would cite another political figure as a greater guiding light, but they are divided over which of her instincts to revive. As a result, the party today lacks a forward-facing thesis.

Who speaks for the state reformer, when the state continues to grow post Covid?

How do we rise to the challenge that many of our loved institutions, including the Civil Service and NHS, which are both bloated and brittle?

Who defends personal responsibility and freedom of speech, while also reversing the insufferable unwillingness to respect differences of opinion?

Who advocates undoing the myriad changes introduced by Tony Blair that have proven to be destructive and antipathetic to our nation’s societal cohesion?

While the left paint the government of the 1980’s as brutal and deaf to the needs of the public, Thatcher was a pragmatist and a collaborator, working with her parliamentary party to deliver needed and lasting changes to the British economy. She shifted the dial slowly in the most part, and to great political success.

This is not a biased singular viewpoint, it is one shared by the experts who recognise her impact on society; it is internal distinctions that make it difficult to settle on a cohesive narrative.

Is the Conservative Party’s mission to deregulate or to conserve institutions? To rethink the state or shrink it? Should we protect our UK markets, or establish more free markets so that we can sell to the world? All have been Thatcherite answers, but which will be most relevant in future elections and define conservatism today?

So unlike the Labour Party, the problem isn’t ideology, it’s authorship. Thatcher’s story was written in the face of national decline, against the backdrop of strikes and stagflation. It was personal, moral and bold. Today’s challenges are equally seismic: ageing populations, stagnant growth, global instability and a lack of trust in our political class.

The challenge for the Conservative Party today is not a lack of belief, it is a surfeit of it, spread across the many faces of Thatcherism.

Unity of legacy has not translated into unity of purpose. The task ahead is not to repudiate the past, but to curate it with discipline, to decide which elements of Thatcher’s legacy speak most powerfully to today’s Britain. Until then, the party remains a chorus of soloists, each singing from the same hymnbook, but not quite in harmony or from the same page and at worst, creating a noise that no one wants to listen to.

Kemi Badenoch therefore needs to use her success of recent weeks. She needs to not get distracted by the noise, but be as pragmatic as her political hero to formulate policies that honour that Thatcherism of today and take all of her MPs with her.