The Legacy of Margaret Thatcher: a Q & A with Gillian Peele and Tom Lubbock

In 1975 Margaret Thatcher defeated Edward Heath for the Leadership of the Conservative Party. Both have a firm claim to be the Prime Minister with the humblest origin. Both resigned after failing to defeat a challenge to their leadership on the first ballot. In the words of Malcolm Rifkind, both were strong-willed, stubborn and convinced of their own rectitude (Thatchers most famous quality but also one that Tony Blair cited in his 2005eulogyfor Ted Heath). But these similarities are as tittle tattle compared to the fact that as prime minister both faced the same governing challenge, the same kernel of the same problem: how to govern a country that some said had become ungovernable.

This is where their fortunes diverge sharply. How did the figure of Margaret Thatcher so completely come to overshadow that of her predecessor as Conservative Leader?That is the subject of a podcast by Dr Tom Lubbock and Gillian Peele that you can hear by clicking this link.

This podcast is also available on the University of Oxfords podcast page, and on Politics In Spires. You can also download it from iTunes.

Dr Tom Lubbock is a lecturer in politics at Magdalen College, Oxford.