There Is No Alternative

The use of ellipses in quoted text indicates that I have shortened a quotation, but readers who wish to consult my unedited interviews will be able to do so. Following the paperback publication of this book, I will donate my recordings and transcripts to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation. I will also give them to the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge, where they will join the Thatcher Papers.

For consistency, I have changed British to American spelling, even when quoting British source material, although I have not changed proper names (such as the "British Labour Party"). For brevity, and because British honorifics are generally meaningless to Americans, I have mostly eschewed them—I refer, for example, to "Thatcher" rather than "Lady Thatcher," or "Baroness Thatcher" as she has in turn been titled. I mean no disrespect by this, only warm American informality and an eagerness to get straight to the point.

Not long after I wrote the last sentence of the book, the financial meltdown began. The global economy is now sunk in a deep, prolonged recession, one so severe that many are asking whether the Left has been right about free markets all along. Even I have been tempted to wonder.

We all know the grim statistics. The United States now has the weakest job market since the Great Depression. Five million potential workers have left the labor force since 2007. The duration of unemployment has risen to record lengths. Many Americans were stunned and humiliated by the credit downgrade, but the downgrade reflected the facts.

In 2010—for the first time—the United States fell from the ranks of the economically "free" to "mostly free," according to the Index of Economic Freedom. There have been "notable decreases in financial freedom, monetary freedom, and property rights," the report observed.

As for Western Europe, those of us who have noted for years that its massive pension liabilities and social welfare programs could not be sustained, particularly given its demography, at least have the satisfaction of saying, "We told you so." But no one really wanted to be so right about that. That Europe's monetary policy has failed is now completely obvious. The economic collapse in the periphery countries—Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain—is threatening to envelop the center. The rot and corruption in the peripheral states had only been disguised by debt accumulation.

It is hard to imagine a worse time, geopolitically, for the West and its ideals to look, literally, bankrupt, or for America to be so pathologically absorbed with its own problems. It is assuredly immensely dangerous.

Although it is politically predictable to put all the blame for this on Obama, it is also absurd. In retrospect, it is clear these problems have been decades in the making. In the past decade, in particular, Congresses and Presidents alike have assented to a surge of spending—the bulk of it non-defense spending.

I have heard countless times since this book was published that America "needs a Margaret Thatcher." I am often asked if an American politician—so long as he is a Republican or he is a she—is "the next Thatcher," and I am told just as often that Thatcherism has been discredited by the world's recent economic travails. It is quite rare, however, that I meet anyone who knows all that much about her beyond having a strong feeling of some kind. That is a source of some frustration to me. In pessimistic moments, I worry that the lack of eagerness to explore her real record in depth might be evidence that slogans and entertainment have not merely supplemented but replaced all political thought, and that this might be, inevitably, the fate of all free societies. In more optimistic moments, I notice that, for slogans and entertainment, America is absolutely unrivalled—and for sure, no one else in the world is thinking more deeply about anything.

But there is no hope of defending—or criticizing—Thatcher's record in a serious way, or learning anything from her story that might truly be useful, if one is defending or criticizing a mythical caricature. When I am breezily assured by Americans that feral youths and rioters would not have dared to torch a British city had Thatcher been in power, I can only say that they're entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. To adopt Thatcher as a heroine without realizing that her first years in power were disastrous, that city after city went up in flames, that only extraordinary luck kept her in office at all, suggests a worrying indifference to history and to truth. It hints, too, at a longing for authoritarianism rather than for principled—or pragmatic—conservative leadership. That political discourse should often be about images and slogans are perfectly normal. When only empty images and slogans are on offer, I just have to hope that those offering them are secretly smarter than they sound.

It is true that Thatcher promoted "deregulation," and that "failure of regulation" appears to have been a significant factor in the financial collapse. But to say this is almost meaningless. The deregulation she promoted had nothing to do with the regulations or lack of regulations variously mooted as the trigger of the meltdown on Wall Street. It is simply untrue that she favored free markets with no regulation at all. Quite the contrary. She was a strong proponent, indeed a passionate proponent, of proper regulation—the kind of regulation that makes free markets function properly. She was emphatically not an anarchist—and she certainly did not advance the notion that the best state is one without rules or their enforcement.

You will note that those who say "Thatcherite deregulation" is to blame never seem to point to a specific deregulatory failure connected to Thatcher. The laws and regulations she favored were generally good ones and remain good. Only someone who is really not thinking could blame shoddy subprime mortgages and complex credit derivatives on Thatcher: When she came to power, the financial instruments in question had not been invented.

What kind of deregulation did Thatcher promote? She eliminated the foreign exchange controls that had been in place in Britain since the Second World War. She opened the stock market to foreign and domestic traders. This was the essence of "Thatcherite deregulation" in the financial sector. No one in his or her right mind is seriously suggesting, now, that these reforms were a mistake, and no one is seriously proposing to reverse them. No one ever points to a specific Thatcherite regulatory reform that can be connected to the current crisis, because there wasn't one. "She promoted greed" is not an intellectually serious argument. Greed has been with us since the Garden of Eden.

A key point, painfully overlooked: Thatcher was in fact a proponent of quite stringent bank regulation. The evidence for this is the 1986 Financial Services Act, which closed loopholes in the coverage of investor protection laws and established a more comprehensive regulatory structure to enhance enforcement powers. It applied the same investor protection standards to a broad range of securities and investment activities. I can say with confidence that the unregulated explosion of leverage in Western economies that followed her time in power was not what she stood for.

The economic policies for which Thatcher is best known—and which for a time wrenched Britain from a trajectory of decline—have not been discredited by this crisis. Britain was essentially a socialist state before Thatcher and the second-poorest country in Europe. She is known for denationalizing failing British industries; taking on and weakening Britain's overweeningly powerful trade unions; curtailing government spending, advocating sound money, and promoting a business-friendly tax environment. She is also known for the skepticism she showed later in her time in power—now vindicated—about the project of European financial and political integration. Her reforms led to the longest sustained period of British economic expansion of the postwar era. Nothing in the recent crisis detracts from this or suggests that these reforms were misguided—or that their lessons are no longer relevant.

And nothing, surely, detracts from her insight that the sovereign nation-state is the only entity that has thus far in history proved capable of acting effectively to secure its citizens' interests. This point, as much as the arguments she made about free markets, needs deep consideration.

In reviewing the first edition of this book, Theodore Dalrymple suggested a criticism that I thought excessively pessimistic at the time, but I fear now may be correct:

I am not as dour by nature as Dr. Dalrymple, but I am open to the possibility that he's right. If so, it suggests to me a terrible question: Is this the inevitable trajectory of open societies and market economies?

There is some evidence that it is: Every time I return to America, the culture seems to me more childish and self-absorbed. But then again, every time I return, I'm older. Honestly, I do not know, and neither does anyone: The future is hard to predict.

But America's inability to produce politicians who both speak to the electorate and speak like adults, particularly about foreign policy, is an alarming sign. In that regard, the difference between Thatcher and any politician now alive seems quite stark. By now many politicians are willing to make one of Thatcher's key arguments: nothing is possible without economic growth; absent a vibrant economy, there can be no effective foreign policy. Nor, for that matter, can social welfare programs be preserved. But Thatcher never pretended to the electorate that one might just ignore the rest of the world without consequence. The retreat of the United States into an isolationism characterized by indifference certainly cannot be justified by anything Thatcher said, did, or believed.

The isolationism is as profound among those who claim to reject it as it is among those who endorse it. It is illustrated by the lack of serious discussion about foreign and defense policy even among those who claim to be robust proponents of American leadership abroad. The first Republican candidate debate at Ames lasted for two hours. Of these, eight minutes—at the end of the debate—concerned foreign policy; not one serious argument was made about it.

To read an American newspaper is to feel that most of the world has dropped off the map. Serious coverage of the Middle East—the most unstable region of the world—has been ceded to Al Jazeera; the mainstream American press contains almost no foreign news. If the media no longer concerns itself seriously with the rest of the world, they cannot entirely be faulted for it: You can't sell a product for which there is no demand.

The depth and severity of the economic crisis in the West and the exposure of the real level of corruption, the crony capitalism, and the sheer incompetence of its leadership have tested my confidence. I have no doubt that free markets, sovereign states, limited government, and constitutional democracy have produced the most creative, free, and just societies ever known. But can states thus constituted stay that way? If the high point of Western power, competence, and confidence has passed, I suppose the answer is "no."

Thatcher's hatred of socialism was ideological, as I wrote, but it was also personal: It was her country in decline. When I note that the United States is economically stagnant, debt-bound, heavily regulated, bureaucratic, less self-governing, less free, shallow, childish, incurious, self-indulgent, self-absorbed, illiterate, obese, and moribund, I am hardly able to be dispassionate about this. When I note as well that pockets of great entrepreneurial dynamism and talent remain, that my country has a proven history of self-renewal, that nothing is written, and that the world is apt to be a very dark place without it, I am not saying this out of mere academic curiosity.

It is hard now to look at the West with perfect optimism and confidence. But we must, for as Dr. Johnson remarked, reformation is necessary, and despair is criminal. Margaret Thatcher was never tempted by despair. I doubt that she would be now, either.

She is one of the most controversial figures of the second half of the twentieth century—worshipped, loathed, feted, mocked, her significance alternately exaggerated beyond reason and scornfully dismissed, sometimes by the same person in the same sentence. Everyone connected to her, it seems, has his or her own vividly imagined and almost supernatural Margaret Thatcher. No two Thatchers are exactly alike. I emphasize in this book the divergence of views about her rather than the similarities. I also emphasize the historiographical challenges of judging her impact upon Britain and the world. I do this not to advance an obscure postmodern thesis, but to illustrate the complexity of her personality and legacy.

My own view? I find her fascinating. I believe she was enormously significant. In fact, I believe she changed the world, and mostly for the better. I am nonetheless skeptical of some of the more hagiographic claims made on her behalf. But if this book is not a single-minded defense of Thatcher, this is in part because there is no need for one. She was, after all—far more than most people—exceptionally capable of defending herself. She has done so very ably in her autobiography. When she passes, the army of her devout will carry the torch and will need no help from me.

My aim instead has been to offer a portrait, seen through a prism, of an extraordinary personality and towering historical figure—a woman whose influence extends far beyond Great Britain and far beyond her moment in power.

I have also attempted to answer two questions. How do some people become larger than life?

And why, in particular, did she?