RIP Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013

What Reagan was to the United States in the 1980’s, Margaret Thatcher was for Great Britain. I use “Great” here purposefully because in the couple of decades before Thatcher took power, Britain was far from great. Britain of the 1960’s and 70’s was a Britain of perpetual decline, a Britain that had lost its Empire (listen to The Kinks’ 1969 Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) and had not found another purpose. British economist Ruth Lea states that the role of government in Britain before Thatcher was “managing decline.” The rest of Western Europe seemed to be passing Britain by, as the unions had an unconscionable stranglehold on British entrepreneurism and economic growth, the future was bleak.

Along came The Iron Lady, Britain’s first (and so far only) female prime minister. She had the stones to do what no male British politician would do, attack the unions head on and bring on an economic revolution. It was painful, there was a serious recession early on, millions became unemployed…but it was necessary. She revived the economy and stood up firmly against opposition both at home and abroad. In Reagan she found her “political soul mate” (in the famous words of one of her aides) and in Gorbachev she finally found a Russian with whom “I can do business.”

I’m not saying she made all of the right moves (she opposed German reunification, for instance), but she brought Britain back. Maybe much of the population was kicking and screaming along the way, because her reforms indeed hurt at times, but she did what Reagan did for us. While both have controversial legacies, both took power in countries where confidence was low (Britain probably lower than the U.S.) Both were irrepressibly, possibly even delusionally, optimistic about the future. Both were master politicians, both believed in capitalism and the free market to their core. Most importantly, their optimistic (bordering on jingoistic, at times) attitudes were contagious. By the end of the 1980’s, it was good to be an American again, and it was good to be a Briton as well. In these uncertain times where strong leadership seems in such short supply that even a petulant child like Kim Jong Un feels that he can bellow at the United States with threats of nuclear weapons with impunity, it makes us miss leaders like Reagan and Thatcher all the more.