Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

We have indeed lost a great Briton, and many here today on the Government and the Opposition Benches have lost a great friend. I myself was a mere acquaintance, but like many others I felt I knew her before I met her. My childhood memories are full of her and the vibrant colour she brought to political life. Her ability to escape the normal bounds of politics and penetrate our day-to-day lives is evidenced by the fact that when I was six, and when she had been Prime Minister for less than a year, I had perfected an uncanny impression of her, which led to Mrs Thatcher to be written into my primary school production of Dick Whittington. Within three years, her leadership, resolve and reassurance would provide vision and comfort to many of my classmates in Portsmouth, as their fathers set off to retake the Falkland Islands.

In her later years, Lady Thatcher supported me and many others as we strove to get elected to this place. I was struck by her kindness and her interest in people and what they wanted to achieve. She took time to speak to me and to write to me and other Conservative parliamentary candidates when we won or, perhaps more important, when we lost. Her principle, her courage and her vision for Britain meant that she was able to motivate long after she left office.

Mourning the loss of Ronald Reagan, her great friend and western co-architect of the demise of the cold war, Lady Thatcher said:

“We here still move in twilight. But we have one beacon to guide us that Ronald Reagan never had. We have his example.”

We have hers: her confidence that a conviction politician could lead her country; her unshakeable belief in the best of human nature; her optimism that this country could be led back to international respect and renown; her focus on making a real, tangible difference to people’s lives; her self-confidence, not founded in arrogance but in belief in equal access to opportunity and in meritocracy; her ambition that others should achieve their ambitions; and her courage to do what she believed to be right and to take responsibility for it, to face down terrorism and the foes of freedom.

Margaret Thatcher was a warrior who fought for freedom of the individual and of nations. She believed in the nation state, but where her opponents could see only the state, she saw the nation. She believed in Britain and the British people, in our history, our destiny and our capacity to play a leading role in the world.

For those who were born after Lady Thatcher’s premiership—a vast cohort that now includes many young adults—her legacy may be hard to comprehend, for the simple reason they have only lived in the Britain she forged. Nowadays, talk of freedom when freedom can be taken for granted seems overblown, the nearness of danger in the cold war now intangible, the destructive power of the unions so distant as to seem always doomed, triumph over an invading dictator predestined and Britain’s high standing in the world an unshakeable fact. Yet personal freedom, victory in the cold war, proper industrial relations and a dynamic market economy, triumph in the Falklands and respect for Britain’s voice in the councils of the world were not inevitable accomplishments. That is why they were accomplishments —her accomplishments.

As we mourn Lady Thatcher, I hope she will inspire us afresh. We should take pride in her life, her achievements and what this country was able to do under her leadership and henceforth as a consequence of it. We should celebrate a remarkable life of service and a remarkable woman.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—