Blain’s Morning Porridge, Oct 13th 2025: Margaret Thatcher –Consequences in a Changed World
“And what about the vegetables? Oh, they’ll have the same as me…”
Margaret Thatcher would have celebrated her 100th Birthday yesterday. She is widely considered the defining British politician of the post-war era. But it was a very different time, and we should not blind ourselves to the long-term consequences of Thatcherism. Decisions made over 35 years ago affect Britain today, and we exist in a very much less friendly and uncertain world.
I was chatting with my taxi driver, Simon, as he drove me to the station and he asked what I thought about the Conservative Party Conference. I joked about the cult of Thatcherism on display, and he came out with a classic comment: “Margaret Thatcher was to the Conservative party what Alex Ferguson was to Manchester United. They made their teams unbeatable. And when they left, the teams destroyed themselves.”
Football and politics seldom make for a perfect simile, but Simon nailed it.
Margaret Thatcher is the defining UK politician of the last 80 years. The first Female prime minister (although she was prouder to be the first with a science degree!), Conservative with a capital C, leader of the then most successful political party in history, a World-Class statesperson. She told Reagan and Gorbachev what’s what. She was forthright and more than slightly scary.
She was respected but not loved. I remember a joke around that time: Q: “Why will the UK remain a monarchy?” A: “President Thatcher.”
(Full disclosure: My first political memory is my mum encouraging us on a demo down Princess Street in Edinburgh to chant “Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher”.)
The flailing Tories tried to rekindle Thatcher’s greatness to enliven their sparsely attended conference. Last night there were competing “dinners” in London (I believe hosted by Boris and Kemi Badenough respectively) to celebrate her centenary. The attendees no-doubt bemoaned what has happened to the UK since she was forced out of office.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s the City was in full flow, dominating global financing and driving the boom in London property prices. The UK was leading the debate in Europe. No UK politician had to kow-tow to American Presidents while nervously reminding them of the “special relationship”. British companies were some of the most admired on the planet, and the FTSE was a leading global stock index.
How different today. Wander down any English high street and wonder what kind of retail holocaust occurred. The UK’s most valuable private company is a porn-site – Only Fans. The City lacks entropy, feeling like its run by actuaries for the benefit of regulators, cost accountants and compliance officers! The American Investment banks dominate finance and are making trillions. There are no big ideas driving broken Britain. Labour might be marginally better than the Tories they replaced, but that is not saying much.
Part of Today’s problem will be down to government – effectively we’ve had 80-years of same-as, same-as post WW2 UK social-democracy. After an exhausting war, the Labour government of 1945 came to power on promises of social justice and equality – nationalisation and the NHS, the rise of the welfare state and, consequentially, the bureaucratisation of the state under an increasingly powerful civil service. The initial imperative was to unwind the unaffordable costs of empire – but that has become the theme of the age; the unaffordability of government, and how it has become increasingly more expensive for it to deliver less!
Successive administrations defined themselves as Blue or Red, but essentially, they were variations of the same social democratic theme. The Red Team favoured more Govt intervention and welfare, the Blue Team less of both. If there is blame, blame them both.
Then came Thatcher. She changed the consensus for a short-time. She pushed through privatisation – putting the entire nation up for sale to foreign investors, rolled back the state, deindustrialised the regions and tired smoke-stack industries, while making the electorate think about responsibility and wealth – home ownership became the guinea stamp of personal success. She fought the miners and won a pyric victory to introduce a regressive poll tax.
It’s easy to blame Thatcher’s policies for the state of the UK today. De-industrialisation divided the UK – Scotland will never forgive her. Privatisation of state assets and infrastructure left shareholders rich, but a nation suffering chronic underinvestment in railways, water & sewerage and fractured energy supply. Today, most big British brands are now owned by American private equity.
Her efforts to breed future generations of home-owning conservative voters have had cataclysmic consequences. She wanted home ownership to become an aspirational objective. But a failure to replace right to buy social housing and bad planning means today we have homes that are unaffordable for 80% of the population, and rents as so high young workers don’t have accommodation security or the ability to start family formation. Britain has become a nation of elderly haves and younger have nots. Right to buy has left the country’s housing stock chronically depleted with devasting future demographic consequences.
On the other hand, UK industry has hardly excelled itself. Investment by the private sector to improve productivity, the bane of stalled UK growth, is a fraction of Europe or the US. UK entrepreneurs flee the land of their birth for tax havens – blaming unfair and punitive government policies for disincentivising them to stay. (Hang them as traitors I say!) There is little prospect crooks like Baroness Bra will ever sit sewing mailbags at His Majesty’s pleasure for ripping off tax-payers.
Productivity also took a massive dunt from the trade frictions of Brexit. Mr Farage promised us £600mm a week for the NHS as the Brexit dividend. Has anyone seen it? Or, do you know how many small boats were landing illegal immigrants on the UK prior to Brexit? Clue: It’s a number less than one.
And the broader World has also changed. Starmer might have been preening in Egypt yesterday, but the UK was a bit player – spear-carrier No 4 in the Trump entourage. The current period of hegemonic change, potential conflict and geopolitical ructions is paying little attention to the UK. Europe has become almost an economic backwater.
Today UK governments no longer talk about grand visions for macro-growth and expansion, but the micro aspects of balancing the budget, austerity versus welfare, and how to tweak taxes to encourage marginal growth. There is no discernible plan for national reconstruction, how to trigger a new age, or how to stimulate the inventiveness and innovation in the still world class UK universities – like everything else they are starved of funds. The government is run in thrall to imaginary bond market vigilantes – the reality is all bond investors care about is getting their money back. (And they have little to worry about – the UK is not about to go bust.) Show them a good plan, and they will fund it.
Today the UK is heading down pretty much the same path of rising inequality, political polarisation and division that MAGA populism has created in the USA, but without anything like the same economic strength to support it. The populist message promises much, but will deliver little. Yet voters are buying it. Fake news and uncontrolled social media pumping our disinformation has reinforced the increasingly polarised views many voters now hold on divisive issues like immigration, channelling them towards Reform. The once trusted conventional news media are dismissed as liars. Chaps I would otherwise describe as sensible tell me I can’t trust the papers or the BBC because they are owned, run and dominated by the WEF which seeks to enslave us all under a yoke of woke.
Whateva…
So what’s the solution? It isn’t resurrecting Thatcher – heaven forbid – but we need vision and leadership. Things may feel bleak, but the UK is a great place to live. Sunken ambitions and a lack of motivation is holding us back… We need a plan, ambition and challenge.
It’s not a Thatcher we need to meet that challenge… but something like a World Cup win would to cheer us all up again, and someone with a bit of personality and a great deal of common sense to plan an economy that prioritised the priorities and made the rest work would definitely help deliver recovery!
Out of time.. and back to serious stuff tomorrow…
Bill Blain
CEO – Windshift Capital
Author – The Morning Porridge
Partner – Shard Capital
