Feb
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‘Thatcher rescued Britain’s greatness’
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Thatcher rescued Britain’s greatness
By David Cameron
Last Updated: 1:16pm GMT 01/02/2008
Those who say that the modern Conservative Party is breaking with the legacy of Margaret Thatcher are wrong.
Lady Thatcher was a moderniser, one of the great modernising prime ministers of our history. She refused to accept the conventional wisdom of her day. In doing so she ruffled some feathers among the old guard of her party, but she was proved right by the public in successive elections, and right by history.In the 1970s the conventional wisdom held that Britain was on a slow and irreversible decline, both economically and in terms of world prestige - and the best that politicians could do was manage that decline gracefully.
Margaret Thatcher wasn’t having any of it. She had an unabashed confidence in Britain, and she took the bold steps that were necessary to reverse our post-war decline.
She tackled inflation through getting control of the money supply, an enormously difficult task which not only makes Gordon Brown’s sole monetary decision - to hand over control over interest rates to the Bank of England - look puny in comparison; it made it possible in the first place.
She ensured that British business was manageable by restoring trade unions to the democratic control of their members, defeating the union leaders who were running firms from the shop floor.