Bruce Anderson: What if Thatcher led the Tory party today?

On Thursday, Margaret Thatcher attended a dinner to celebrate the liberation of the Falklands. These days, she no longer speaks, but had she risen to do so, the roar of welcome would have been audible at Port Stanley. She may be an old lady, but she has lost none of her electricity; none of her hold over the Tory party's emotions. That is one of David Cameron's problems.

Vast numbers of his supporters still believe that she is the Platonic ideal of Tory leadership: the once and future Prime Minister who sets the standards by which all her successors should be judged. The Tories who adore her have conferred mythic status upon her. In so doing they forget that, like all great leaders, she owed her success to a fusion of ability, force of personality, and the fortune of circumstances. In 1979, she was not only the right leader. She was the only leader, just like Churchill in 1940.

Nobody else would have risen to the challenges and fronted down the perils. This does not mean that either of them would have been the right leader in different circumstances.

Robert Rhodes James wrote an excellent book on Churchill's career up until 1939. He entitled it A Study in Failure. That would have been the last word on Churchill, but for Adolf Hitler. If it had not been for the crises which beset Britain from 1972 onwards, Margaret Thatcher would have been dimly remembered as the statutory woman in Ted Heath's cabinet, who never outgrew statutory womanhood. To judge solely by her record as Education Secretary, she would have been a good chairman of the local women's advisory committee.

That was not the last word. In 1979, Britain was beset by three evils at home, which combined to pose a fundamental question. They were reinforced by a greater evil, which menaced the entire free world.

The domestic threats came from chronic inflation, lawless trade unions and the nationalised industries. All this had led many Tories who seemed wiser than Margaret Thatcher, and who had certainly read more history, to conclude that the best which could be hoped for was the orderly management of decline. In 1979, the question was in play, would Britain become a socialist society? It also seemed possible that the Soviet Union could win the Cold War, Finlandising West Germany and eliminating American influence in Europe. The Soviets were still on the offensive. There seemed to be no threat to their own imperial power.

So thank God for Margaret Thatcher and for her abhorrence of defeatism. In her book, order and decline could not co-exist in the same moral universe. By the end of her premiership, the dominant issues of 1979 were beginning to gather their first film of dust in the museum of political archaeology. The West had won the Cold War. Britain was not going socialist. But no sooner had one set of challenges receded than they were replaced by new dangers.

Chris Patten once made the third shrewdest remark in the lexicon of Tory wisdom (the first two are "when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change", and "this pig doesn't weigh as much as I thought it did - but then again, I never thought it would".) Lord Patten of Barnes' contribution was: "In politics, as soon as you take a trick in diamonds, you find that hearts have become trumps."

If Mrs Thatcher had been asked to contribute, her favourite Tory apothegm might well have been "a woman's work is never done", a phrase from the foundations of her own character. Yet in 1990, that was more true than she would have cared to admit. There was work to be done which the Woman had neglected. The danger of socialism had receded: not so, the danger of European federalism. In that regard, Mrs Thatcher's record was lamentable. In 1990, Europe had more power over British affairs than in 1979.

Margaret Thatcher had been equally negligent on the public services. At moments, she seemed viscerally hostile to their existence. This did not restrain her from spening taxpayers' money on a social-democratic scale. She never addressed the basic issue. How can we ensure that the so-called public services do actually serve the public?

That question remains in play, unlike the European one. On the EU, every British patriot should be grateful to Tony Blair and thank God that he was not Margaret Thatcher. Mr Blair is a Europhile. If he had possessed one-tenth of her resolve, he would have used his political assets to realise his ambitions. He had motive, means and opportunity. He only lacked the courage to attempt the murder of British independence. As it is, he has left a British public opinion which is as healthily Eurosceptic as ever. On the Continent, he has spread dismay and despondency. After their disappointment with Mr Blair, the Continental federasts are beginning to despair of Britain. In so doing, they are also beginning to understand Britain.

The federalists have been frustrated. This is not the same as a final defeat. To achieve that, it will be necessary for the next Tory government to spend years in diplomacy and abrasiveness, to ensure that Britain's role in the EU is as near as possible to a common market plus political co-operation, and as far as possible from federalism. That will be one of Mr Cameron's big tasks, and there are several others. As well as public service reform, he will have to combine environmental protection and economic growth.

He will also have to rebuild the British constitution and to protect the unity of the United Kingdom. These are formidable projects, which would require at least two parliaments. But they would not have been right for Margaret Thatcher. She hated Europe too much to negotiate a stable basis for British membership. Her dislike of the public services would have prevented her from finding the way to a pragmatic and sustainable programme of radical reform.

Moreover, the voters would never have trusted her to do so. They would have assumed that at her hands, "reform" would mean "cuts". Nor would they have trusted her on nuclear power, the only sensible answer to the environment. On the Union, the Scots disliked her too much to listen. The Scots were wrong. These days, they usually are.

If we are to preserve the United Kingdom, there is an unfortunate necessity to take account of Scottish sensitivities. On the constitution, Margaret Thatcher never saw the need for change, so she would have been the wrong leader to unravel the consequences of unnecessary change. She was not interested in thinking about the constitution.

For all these reasons, and in the unlikely event of there being a Margaret Thatcher mark two, she would have been the wrong leader for the next phase of Tory history, and of British history. David Cameron recognises the challenges. He will rise to them. But he is not maximising his opportunities in the opinion polls, partly because so many natural Tories are so dazzled by the Thatcherite heritage that their eyes cannot see clearly and their brains cannot work properly.

Margaret Thatcher is a world historical figure. That will not change. But history is where she now belongs.

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