Truss vs Sunak: Divisive Margaret Thatcher looms over UK leadership race
- Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are campaigning to succeed Boris Johnson as Britain’s next prime minister
- Both candidates have invoked Margaret Thatcher – still a revered favourite of the Conservative grass roots
Two people are running to be Britain’s next prime minister, but a third presence looms over the contest: Margaret Thatcher.
The late former prime minister dominated Britain in the 1980s, and has left a large and contested legacy.
Critics see her as an intransigent ideologue whose free-market policies frayed social bonds and gutted the country’s industrial communities. But for the governing Conservative Party, Thatcher is an icon, an inspiration and the presiding spirit who made Britain fit for the modern era.
In the race to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and prime minister, both Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak claim to embody the values of Thatcher, who died in 2013 at 87.
Asked who was Britain’s greatest prime minister? Both candidates unhesitatingly say Thatcher. Sunak made a key speech in the late leader’s hometown of Grantham, declaring himself a proponent of “common-sense Thatcherism”, while his wife and children took selfies in front of the Iron Lady’s bronze statue.
Truss talks about her own modest origins, inviting comparisons to grocer’s daughter Thatcher, and adopts poses and outfits – bold blue dresses, pussy-bow blouses – that echo the distinctive style of Britain’s first female prime minister.
