Keir Starmer has praised Margaret Thatcher’s “sense of mission” as he makes a pitch for Conservative voters heading into the next election.
The Labour leader picked Thatcher as one of three former prime ministers he wanted to emulate if he became prime minister, alongside his Labour predecessors Tony Blair and Clement Attlee. All three, he said had a drive and sense of purpose that defined their premiership.
Starmer told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House on Sunday: “Thatcher did have a plan for entrepreneurialism, [she] had a mission. It doesn’t mean I agree with what she did, but I don’t think anybody could suggest that she didn’t have a driving sense of purpose.”
In a piece for the Sunday Telegraph, he said: “Every moment of meaningful change in modern British politics begins with the realisation that politics must act in service of the British people, rather than dictating to them. Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.”
Starmer admitted part of the reason for his comments was to woo wavering Tory voters, with polls showing that many people have still to make up their mind how they will vote at the next election.
He told the BBC: “What I say to those many people who will have voted Tory in the past – if you believe in not just fixing your country, but renewing it and taking it forward, if you want to be part of a national project that will take our country forward, build up our economy in the way we want build our security, make sure that we take advantage of the transition that comes with the energy transition, then the Labour party is the party for you.”
The Labour leader’s comments are the latest part of his strategy to move his party away from the legacy of his leftwing predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, and reflect similar praise heaped on Thatcher by Blair throughout his career.
They contrast with statements he has made previously, however. In 2020, when running for the Labour leadership, Starmer released a video boasting of his anti-Thatcherite credentials.
“In the struggles of the 1980s, the Labour movement stood together in solidarity against Thatcher,” it said. “Keir defended the print workers in Wapping. He was in the crowd that night when police on horseback charged into the peaceful picket.”
Starmer himself set up a leftwing journal in the 1980s in which he reportedly wrote about what he called “the authoritarian onslaught of Thatcherism”.
His praise of the former Tory prime minister caused anger among many on the left of the Labour party, including the MP Ian Byrne, who tweeted: “Inequality, hunger, destitution & misery. That’s the real legacy left by Thatcher.”
His comments were also seized upon by Scottish National party leaders in Scotland, where Labour is hoping to pick up more than 20 seats at the next election by appealing to a more broadly leftwing electorate than it is targeting in England.
Humza Yousaf, the SNP leader and first minister, tweeted: “Starmer praising Thatcher is an insult to those communities in Scotland, and across the UK, who still bear the scars of her disastrous policies.”