A Double-edged Legacy

Rudolph Giuliani was in London yesterday to gladhand a few British political figures and get his photo taken. As a result of 9/11 Rudy has high name recognition outside America, and clearly enjoys his quasi-statesmanlike status whenever he travels abroad. (He even has an honorary knighthood from the Queen, joining a small band of American recipients that include some curious names; Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, J Edgar Hoover and, er, Wesley Clark.)

Rudy touched base with Gordon Brown in Downing Street, but was also careful to meet Conservative leader David Cameron as well. (The Tories’ poll ratings have been pretty stagnant since Brown took over; the meeting was certainly more important for Dave than Rudy.) However, this was pretty much a sideshow to the real order of business; a speech to a think-tank named “Atlantic Bridge” attended – and here’s the point – by Baroness Thatcher.

Thatcher is a frail and increasingly reclusive figure these days; having suffered a couple of strokes in recent years, she seldom speaks even when she does appear in public (of which more in a moment). But GOP hopefuls are eager to claim the mantle of the two most successful conservative leaders of modern times – you can barely move round the McCain or Thompson websites without bumping into anecdotes about Ronald Reagan – and, with the Gipper no longer around to confer his blessing on the class of 2008, a photo-op with the Iron Lady is the next-best thing.

But it’s not just Republicans who are happy to be seen with Mrs Thatcher. A couple of weeks ago, Gordon Brown paid tribute to Maggie’s “conviction politics”, and drew an explicit comparison with his own brand of courage and singlemindedness. This drew a wry smile from those of us who remember, albeit distantly, his deep and vocal loathing for what he saw as the failings of the Thatcher ethos (“Poverty does not concern Mrs Thatcher”, as he put it in 1989).

But more surprising was to come. Last week he pulled a rabbit out of his hat; inviting Mrs T to tea at Downing Street, the sight of her standing with him in front of No.10 in a rose-red dress had Tories gaping in disbelief, and not a few of his own party’s base fuming that this most divisive of figures was now considered a suitable guest for a Labour Prime Minister.

If Brown’s coup was carefully and cynically calculated to send out a subliminal message to middle-class voters, that he was a safe pair of hands that could be trusted to secure their prosperity and security in the coming years (let’s hope they don’t read their tax bills too closely), the effect on the Conservatives was that of a cat among the pigeons. The truth is that while a photocall with Mrs Thatcher is de rigueur for right-wing Presidential candidates, and a calculated but worth-it gamble for a left-wing PM, the leaders of the new-look Tories have conspicuously not sought to touch the hem of her robe as Rudy did yesterday.

David Cameron’s mission is to try to get voters to forget the old Conservatives, which for too many conjures up memories of high unemployment, social division and, more latterly, economic mismanagement and sleazy politics (until Blair’s government took that last to a whole new level). Everything he does at the moment seems calculated to enrage the right wing of his own party; one of his first and most frequently-repeated soundbites was to insist that “there is such a thing as society, it’s just not the same thing as the state” – an explicit repudiation of Maggie’s famous statement that there was not, in fact, any such thing.

The Conservatives can’t decide what the lesson of the Thatcher years is; do voters still, deep down, yearn for the certainties of Thatcherite economics and social conservatism, or is the new orthodoxy of high spending and social justice really going to deliver Labour a fourth term? Gordon Brown can cherry-pick from her legacy and use her still-iconic image to reassure his target electorate and sow discord among his enemies. For GOP grandees like Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, Maggie’s blessing is an entirely uncomplicated good; helping to shore up his conservative credentials among those parts of his own party who suspect, rightly, that he’s not – at least on social issues such as guns, gays and abortion – a conservative at all.

The strange truth is it’s only among her own party that her legacy is such a poisoned chalice. Margaret Thatcher haunts the Tories like the ghost of Christmas past; four leaders have been measured against this diminutive old woman since 1990 and all have been found wanting. Cameron may yet be a fifth.