With the Conservatives having whittled their list of leadership hopefuls down to two, one thing is clear: this lot are obsessed with Margaret Thatcher. They dress up as her, do impressions, genuflect before her memory and – where they think the membership might not get it – lay it on with a trowel. Leaving it to others to unpick why Liz Truss, after such an underwhelming start, beat Penny Mordaunt and the rest to make the final with Rishi Sunak, it might be useful to ask: what does Thatcher still have over this party?
Her period in office ended more than 30 years ago – and it ended in ignominy. Her context was so dramatically different from ours that, even if Truss et al managed to approximate Thatcherism in policy terms, those policies would make no sense. In popularity terms, she was always more Marmite than Nutella, and this was particularly apparent within her party.
