Terrence Casey: What Badenoch can learn from Thatcher’s early stumbles as Leader of the Opposition | Conservative Home

Terrence Casey is the author of Forging the Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, the 1970s, and the Origins of Neoliberalism (Routledge 2025), a Professor of Political Science at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for British Politics at the University of Hull.

“She never risks anything: just sits there listening to [the Prime Minister] with a carefully modulated look of disapproval on her face, then produces one regulation intervention per Question time. When she is ready for this great act she starts to lean forward slightly and an atmosphere of ‘wait for it’ builds up behind her. When she finally rises, our chaps cheer ironically. She ignores them and fires her shaft. It never completely misses but is never (or very, very rarely) deadly.”

You can be forgiven for confusing this with one of the negative sketches proliferating these days regarding Kemi Badenoch at Prime Minister’s Questions. It is, in fact, Labour MP Barbara Castle’s take on another Conservative Opposition Leader, Margaret Thatcher.

Today marks 50 years since Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party. In my just published Forging the Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, the 1970s, and the Origins of Neoliberalism (Routledge 2025), I chronicle her years in opposition.

Badenoch’s inability to capitalize on the plunging fortunes of Keir Starmer’s Government has elicited wails of anger and anguish against her leadership from the Tory blogosphere, even calls for her resignation, despite having only been in the position since November. In pondering Badenoch’s fate, the anniversary of Thatcher’s ascension seems an apropos moment to recall how she handled the challenges of being Leader of the Opposition.

Like Badenoch, Thatcher inherited a defeated and demoralized party. Also, like Badenoch, her early forays in the Commons went poorly, as the Castle quote indicates. Her rhetorical attacks consistently fell flat, and the raucous, well-lubricated environment of the Commons in the 1970s frequently pushed her voice to unpleasant registers. After one session, a Conservative MP lamented to another, “Hasn’t quite gotten the pitch of the wicket yet, has she?,” to which the other replied, “It’s the pitch of her voice that’s more worrying.”

At PMQs, whether against Harold Wilson, or later James Callaghan, she frequently disappointed. Wilson had a well-deserved reputation as a wily and elusive debater, but she did even worse against Callaghan, who managed the air of a wise old statesman while dismissing her condescendingly. Pressed on the terms of the IMF loan, he spoke to her like a schoolgirl. “I am sure one day the right hon. Lady will understand these things a little better,” stopping just short of patting her on the head.

Her rating as leader never exceeded his, right up to the end. In her first 18 months, she failed to land many substantial blows in the Commons.

It was even more disheartening because Labour was vulnerable.  In 1975, the Labour Government’s free spending drove inflation up to 25 per cent. In 1976, rising deficits and a plummeting pound forced Callaghan’s government to seek an emergency loan from the IMF. Despite Labour’s mismanagement, the Conservatives made no gains, staying level with Labour in the polls throughout. The IMF crisis provided a breakthrough, but the double-digit advantage of early 1977 evaporated within a year.

Thatcher faced a similar problem to what the Conservatives face now. Whenever she challenged Labour on its policies, the PM could retort that many of these problems started under the Heath Government. Tory Chancellor Anthony Barber’s “dash for growth” fed inflation as much as  Denis Healey’s loose spending ways. Plus, what would they do differently?

She had no ready answers because the party was divided. Those who were becoming Thatcherites (there was no coherent “Thatcherism” in 1975; it had to constructed), including Sir Keith Joseph, concluded the dominant modes of political-economy governance – the “postwar consensus” – represented a relentless drift toward socialism. If economic decline was to be reversed, this must be halted. A radical change in direction was needed.

Alas, much of her Shadow Cabinet, still packed with One Nation Tories like Jim Prior and Ian Gilmour, saw a different world. The postwar consensus was simply the political environment in which they lived and to which the party had to adapt. The Heath Government, dedicated to that framework, did nothing wrong; just a run of bad luck and a misguided attempt to challenge radical unionists. To placate the moderate middle, the message needed honing, but the policies were correct.

These contrasting perspectives left the party unable to come to terms with the vital issues of the day. Should inflation be controlled through monetary policies or an incomes policy? Should the party seek a modus vivendi with the unions or take a harder line?

They would spend four years arguing without resolution on these points. The policy documents of the time, while coalescing on core Conservative principles, such as cutting taxes and lowering spending, were exercises in obfuscation on inflation and the unions. Margaret Thatcher, the conviction politician, was forced to accept this fudge. She proved an ineffective saleswoman of fudge.

Of course, we know this story has a happy ending. The policy jam was broken by enlisting outsiders, through the Centre for Policy Studies, including John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss, who wrote the “Stepping Stones” strategy, advocating a more aggressive approach toward the unions, a precondition to bringing about a “sea-change in Britain’s political economy.”

Armed with this, when events broke their way – which they did spectacularly with the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 – the Tories were able to offer policies more in line with the public mood. Election victory followed in May 1979, and Mrs Thatcher would reside in Downing Street for 11 years.

History is not mechanistic, and Badenoch is unlikely to tread a similar path to Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, she may be facing even greater challenges than Thatcher.  The Conservatives have a huge margin of seats to make up. The media milieu is more diverse and complex, serving to accelerate the news cycle and coarsen the discourse. Nigel Farage and Reform appear more menacing than the Liberals ever did. Action may thus be more imperative.

However, we see from Thatcher’s tenure in opposition, that it took time for the party to coalesce around her leadership, formulate alternative formulate policies, and convince the electorate the party was genuinely committed to reforming the status quo. And for most of this period, few Tory MPs held up as the Iron Lady we think of today. We do not know how Badenoch’s leadership will play out, but she should perhaps be granted the time and patience, as Thatcher was, to prove she has a similar mettle.