Douglas Carswell's Blog

She's why I'm a Conservative

I turned eight the day she became Prime Minister. The mood of national decline at that time was so all pervasive, the adults around me talked as though this country was finished.

Margaret Thatcher not only thought differently. Her radical ideas meant she had a plan to get Britain off her knees. And she did.

I knew I was a free market Thatcherite long before it ever occurred to me that I might be a Tory.

She was attacked by vested interests, lefty comedians and Tory grandees. I loved her all the more for it.

On almost all the big issues of the day - the economy, Europe, the cold war - she was right, her critics wrong. None more so than those within her own party.

Oh. And she was never rejected by the British people.

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