SIR CONOR BURNS: Kemi ought to embrace the spirit of Maggie this week, not draw back from her… We want a brand new Iron Lady greater than ever

Sitting in her living room in Belgravia’s Chester Square in the final year of her life, Margaret Thatcher was becalmed. She knew her place in history was assured.

I visited her regularly on Sunday evenings. Sometimes she would pick up a copy of The President, The Pope And The Prime Minister: Three Who Changed The World. On the cover were pictures of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Margaret herself. I would sometimes say to her: ‘You must be proud of that?’ Once, with a wry smile, she replied: ‘I am, but I think they’ve got the order wrong.’

Lady T is regarded as Britain’s most consequential prime minister since Clement Attlee because she, like him, wanted to change the country, not just manage it. She told me once that politics was ‘philosophy in action’.

She wasn’t naive about the scale of the challenges she faced on winning office in 1979 – she said it was like climbing up a down escalator.

Today, that analogy feels no less keenly observed. Our structural issues are huge: eye-watering debt, low productivity, a fifth of our workforce on disability benefits, anaemic growth and an ageing population are the flashing red lights on the nation’s dashboard.

Yet our current prime minister is a socialist.

Andy Burnham thinks there is no question for which more state is not the right answer, believes we can tax ourselves to growth, and regulate to increased productivity. Nationalisation, higher welfare and more tax were all put on the agenda last week at the Labour Party conference.

And the centrepiece of Burnham’s manifesto will be his new national care plan. This, we are told (apparently to reassure), will be modelled on the delivery of the NHS. Heaven help us.

Socialism is back. Tony Blair was a mirage. And according to Burnham, everything that is bad about modern Britain started in 1979 with Margaret Thatcher.

Her diagnosis was clear: Britain was overmanned, under-defended, under-policed, badly educated and poorly governed. Her prescription was simple but not simplistic.

She believed that the spirit of creativity, risk-taking merchant enterprise and economic dynamism still lay in the soul of the British people (albeit temporarily dormant from the suffocating socialism of the 1970s). She believed the wealth of a nation was built on the boundless energy and talent of millions of free people determined to improve their lot.

And she rejected the craven creed of the Left that individual effort, the desire to look after one’s family and to pass on wealth, was somehow selfish.

‘A man may climb Everest for himself but at the summit he plants his country’s flag,’ she said.

In short, she trusted the British people, which is something that the current Conservative leader must do as well. Kemi Badenoch’s position at the top of the party is secure, which gives her the space for bold, long-term thinking.

The country is crying out for sensible (not socialist) leadership, vision and stability.

So, this week in Birmingham the challenge falls to Kemi. Can she show herself to be a generational leader in the mould of Mrs Thatcher? Has she the instincts and temperament?

Her rejection of borrowing or taxation to fund the social care plan favoured by Burnham shows courage and long-term thinking. Labour’s change on the triple lock offers space for thinking about pension provision in the decades ahead, which should be embraced.

At conference last year, Badenoch announced the Tories would abolish stamp duty. This week, it is thought inheritance tax could go the same way. But she must knit together these policies into a vision of what Badenoch’s Britain will look like after ten years.

How will she use the Brexit freedoms to unleash the economic dynamism of Britain? How will she keep Britain defended at a time of dire peril? How will she change welfare to protect the vulnerable, not coddle the feckless?

How will she defeat the ideology of ‘multi-culturalism’ and defend our multi-ethnic society based on Judeo-Christian legal traditions and values? How will she keep our Union strong without appeasement to separatists? How will she harness AI for the benefit of the nation while cherishing the humanity of the individual?

It was this generational thinking that helped Thatcher halve national debt. When she entered No 10, Britain owed 43 per cent of its GDP to debtors. At her leaving, it was cut to 21 per cent. She would be aghast that today the figure is 95 per cent of GDP.

On defence, we can credit her for our Trident nuclear deterrent, Challenger tanks and Type 23 frigates, all ordered by her.

Even before the Falklands War, defence spending was up to 5 per cent of GDP. As the Cold War wound down, Britain was still spending 3.2 per cent by 1990. Those decisions ensured our

security and place in the world for decades to come. On Sunday, facing huge peril and war on the continent, the Prime Minister did not even mention the defence of the realm in his speech last week.

Thatcher fired the engines of the service economy, which saw GDP growth nudging 6 per cent in 1988. 

It was a feat achieved only because she stuck to her economic plan to pivot the country away from heavy industry, even through the early years of her premiership when GDP contracted. And let’s not forget she achieved this within the confines of the then European Economic Community – imagine the fizzing energy she would have brought to using the freedoms Brexit has bestowed on Britain.

Of course, the country’s growth was helped by North Sea oil and gas, which Thatcher was not queasy about exploiting, as recent prime ministers have been. She certainly wouldn’t have chased investors out of the North Sea with punitive taxes and green levies.

Across the economy, Thatcher kept the tax burden low. Since the 1980s, the size of the state has grown from 38 per cent of GDP to a corpulent 45 per cent, wheezing with inefficiencies and strikes.

Never has Thatcher’s observation about the rider becoming heavier than the horse rung truer than today, as millionaires pack their bags and take their tax contributions with them.

Tragically, our position is even more perilous than in 1979 – the apotheosis of Labour Britain according to Burnham.

So, far from running from Thatcher’s legacy, as some have advised, this week Kemi must channel her inner Iron Lady – for the country needs it now more than ever.

Sir Conor Burns is a former Conservative MP and trade minister.