29-05-2025
Demonising Thatcher may backfire for Keir
Faced with a new challenge in Reform UK's surging support in the polls, Sir Keir Starmer has turned to an old strategy: attempt to invoke the spirit of the 1980s, and call on tribal Labour loyalties in the fight against Thatcherism.
In his speech today, the Prime Minister framed Britain's politics as a two-horse race between Left and Right. Where he differed from his predecessors was in defining this as a choice between Labour and Reform, dismissing the Conservatives as 'sliding into the abyss'. Nigel Farage will surely be delighted; it is a coup for Reform to be described by the Prime Minister as the de facto opposition given its status as outsider.
It is this status, also, that seems to have dictated Sir Keir's line of attack. While the Tories can be held to their record, part of Reform's appeal is its lack of one. Mr Farage and his colleagues, having never governed, are untainted by the policy failures of the past 28 years. As such, Sir Keir has attempted to pin upon Reform the mantle of a Tory revival: the old enemy with a new face.
All the old warnings were wheeled out. Mr Farage would 'spend billions upon billions upon billions' in 'an exact repeat of what Liz Truss did'. Reform's leader had no understanding of what it was like to grow up 'in a cost of living crisis', and would use 'your family finances … as a gambling chip on his mad experiment'. And while Sir Keir had 'protected those jobs' threatened by US tariffs, Mr Farage would not have. Supporting Reform, in other words, was supporting the pit closures, or their modern equivalents. No doubt the poll tax would have been trotted out had fiscal profligacy not been the theme of the day.
The language may well appeal to Labour's base, and it would be unsurprising if jabs over the NHS and other invocations of Left-wing shibboleths follow. The general public may be less perturbed. While Reform has a great deal of work to do before its policies are a serious prospectus for government, observing as much is unlikely to be a killer blow from a man whose time as party leader has been defined by a series of screeching U-turns.
A dose of genuine Thatcherism would probably do Britain good, and it is to be hoped that the Tories as well as Reform will embrace this spirit. Despite Sir Keir's jibes, he has done little to shift the country off an unsustainable fiscal course, and raised incentive-sapping taxes that destroy economic activity. By the next election, portraying his opponents as 'Thatcherites' may prove an own goal.
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