Coffee House Shots: Kemi vs Nigel - who would Thatcher have backed?

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🗓️ 15 February 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

It is 50 years since Margaret Thatcher was elected Conservative leader, and at this week’s shadow cabinet meeting, Lord Forsyth was invited as a guest speaker to mark the occasion. He noted the similarities between 1975 and 2025. Back then, the party was broke, reeling from defeat and facing the fallout from a reorganisation of local government. But, despite threadbare resources, Thatcher managed to rebuild to win power four years later. ‘You have the potential to do the same,’ Forsyth told Kemi Badenoch.

However, when asked if a young Thatcher would have been drawn to the right’s insurgent Reform Party, Nigel Farage replied, ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt about it.’ He even claimed that Thatcher had voted UKIP in 1999. ‘She believed in meritocracy, she put Jewish people in her cabinet, working-class people like Norman Tebbit. She would have hated wokery and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI),’ said Farage.

What would Mrs Thatcher have thought of the current state of the Conservative Party? Might Reform have appealed to her?

James Heale speaks to Lord Forsyth.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We are very pleased to announce the full line-up for our Coffee House Shots live event on the 26th
0:04.9	February at the Emanuel Centre in Westminster. Join Coffee House Shots regulars, Michael Gove,
0:10.1	Casey Balls, Kate Andrews, as well as very special guests, Robert Jenrick and Jonathan Ashworth
0:15.0	for a look to the year ahead. They will be tackling such questions as, can the Chancellor
0:19.9	reframe the budget in her first spring
0:21.3	statement? What will Trump's first 100 days look like? And will reform cause an upset at the local
0:26.4	elections? So that's Emmanuel Centre, 730, 26th of February. And for tickets, go to
0:31.7	spectator.com.com.com. We look forward to seeing you there.
0:40.2	Hello and welcome to this special Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots.
0:43.6	I'm James Heel and I'm joined today by Michael Forsyth, Minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major,
0:49.0	and finally Secretary of State for Scotland and the end of that last government.
0:52.7	Now, we're joined today by Michael because
0:54.7	it's 50 years this week since Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party.
0:58.7	It's a big year for anniversaries. It's also the centenary since her birth. Michael, welcome to the
1:03.1	podcast. I just wanted to ask, first of all, what do you think Margaret Thatcher would make of
1:08.1	politics today if she were leader of the Conservative Party now?
1:11.4	I think she'd be pretty appalled, actually. She was very much someone who was very careful
1:17.7	in deciding policy. She was very careful in how she made her speeches. The idea that politics
1:25.8	was about slogans on Twitter would have, she would have
1:28.6	found that very difficult to understand. And a lot of people, I think, don't realize that when she
1:35.4	became leader of the Conservative Party 50 years ago, a huge amount of work had gone into working
1:41.9	out exactly how we would save the country, because that's what we
	...

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