David Lammy hailed Margaret Thatcher as a ‘visionary leader’ today as the Labour leadership continued its love-in with the Iron Lady.
The shadow foreign secretary made the remarks the day after Rachel Reeves sparked leftwing outrage with a speech saying she would take lessons from the ex-Tory PM if Labour wins the election.
They unloaded at Sir Keir Starmer’s economic mastermind for briefing out that she plans to emulate the economic impact of Thatcher’s 1979 win and kick-start ‘a decade of national renewal’ if she enters No11.
Speaking to Politico’s Power Play podcast today Mr Lammy said that Ms Reeves analogy had been ‘very apposite’, adding: ‘You can take issue with Mrs Thatcher’s prescription, but she had a big manifesto for change and set about a course that lasted for over two decades.’
While noting the impact her economic plans had on unemployment in Tottenham, where he grew up, he added: ‘Margaret Thatcher was a visionary leader for the UK; no doubt about it — that’s absolutely clear.’
The shadow foreign secretary made the remarks the day after Rachel Reeves sparked leftwing outrage with a speech saying she would take lessons from the ex-Tory PM if Labour wins the election.
Speaking to Politico’s Power Play podcast today Mr Lammy said that Ms Reeves analogy had been ‘very apposite’, adding: ‘You can take issue with Mrs Thatcher’s prescription, but she had a big manifesto for change and set about a course that lasted for over two decades.’
A spokesman for the Momentum grassroots group hit back, saying: ‘Margaret Thatcher’s legacy is all around us, from broken public services to regional inequality. Instead of praising Thatcherism, Labour should be laying out a popular programme to bury it, from public ownership of our public services to new taxes on the wealthiest.’
Ms Reeves came under fire both from the left – as Corbynites attacked her over the parallels drawn with Mrs Thatcher – as well as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt over the Mais lecture in the City of London.
She drew parallels with 1979, when Margaret Thatcher defeated Labour, saying Britain is at an ‘inflection point’.
And she said the UK must not rely on ‘states whose interests conflict with our own’ as she called for a beefed-up industrial strategy and attacked the ‘reckless’ pursuit of globalisation.
The remarks reflect the growing view among many politicians in the West that – after the turbulence caused by the pandemic and amid growing tensions over Taiwan – they must move away from over reliance on China.
Labour’s shadow chancellor pledged to deliver ‘a new chapter’ in Britain’s economic history if the party wins the election and puts her in No11.
But there was uproar, with former Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard saying: ‘No rewriting of history. Thatcher didn’t renew the economy, she broke it.’
Despite the allusion to the transformation of the country in the 1980s, the shadow chancellor made plain that she was not aligning the party to Thatcherite thinking and committed Labour to scrapping trade union reforms brought in under the Conservatives.
But leftwing figures jumped on her remarks. Former Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said: ‘In the 1980s manufacturing was butchered, factory after factory closed, privatisation was let rip, unemployment rocketed, profits boomed, the wage share fell, the rich got richer, and inequality soared.
‘No rewriting of history. Thatcher didn’t renew the economy, she broke it.’
And a spokesman for Momentum, the grassroots group linked to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, added: ‘This is a Labour leadership out of touch with the labour movement and Labour values. We want to overturn Thatcher’s disastrous settlement, not recreate it.’
