For Britain’s Tories, the Answer Is Always Margaret Thatcher

After 12 years in power, Britain’s Conservative Party has hit a wall, unsure of what it is and what it stands for, what its mission is supposed to be, and how it’s supposed to fulfill it. Having replaced David Cameron with Theresa May, then May with Boris Johnson, it is now replacing Johnson with one of two candidates, both of whom are—once again—demanding a new direction for the party and, in turn, the country. Never has Benjamin Disraeli’s angry jibe that “a Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy” seemed so apt.

During this Conservative era, Britain has become poorer, taxes have gone up, and wages have stagnated. And yet, during this time, the Tory party has been able to successfully reinvent itself thanks to Brexit, winning a once-in-a-generation majority to reform the country in the process.

So we find ourselves with the strange spectacle of Johnson’s two prospective successors—Rishi Sunak, the former chancellor, and Liz Truss, the current foreign secretary—trying to present themselves of continuity: the defender of Johnson’s great realignment in 2019, when millions of former Labour supporters voted Conservative, the embodiment of the party’s traditional values that came before.