Labour has found its Margaret Thatcher – disaster for Angela Rayner | Personal Finance | Finance
Mistake. Scratch that. It has never had a female leader. For all his stances on progress and equality, he was able to get Rachel Reeves to become the UK’s first female chancellor, which didn’t end well. Instead, we had a parade of white men, from hare-brained Ed Miliband to Keir Starmer, a pre-programmed pound shop robot.
By contrast, that old sexist Conservative Party somehow managed four female party leaders, including today’s Kemi Badenoch. Imagine if Labor had a Black leader, not just a woman. They would never keep quiet about this.
The Conservatives also made both Liz Truss and Theresa May prime ministers, with results ranging from dismal to disastrous.
Things went well 50 years ago when a certain Margaret Hilda Thatcher replaced Ted Heath as party leader in 1975.
Thatcher came to power as a natural leader. The left despised him and still does, but they could not deny his openness, his energy, his rigor and his will. No Labor leadership candidate has been able to compete with at least one electable candidate.
This may have changed thanks to Home Affairs Minister Shabana Mahmood.
Ms. Mahmood’s rise has been quite impressive. His father ran a corner shop in Birmingham and chaired the local Labor Party, turning the family living room into a strategy centre. Ms. Mahmood would sit and listen, then speak so clearly and decisively that she dominated the discussions.
And now he has made his biggest political intervention on the most toxic area: asylum and migration.
Ms Mahmood, 45, made harsher promises than any Labor minister would dare, to cries of pain from the party’s left.
Many people may not see any similarities to Mrs Thatcher (and many more will not want to see them), but the similarities are striking. Mrs Thatcher and Mrs Mahmood are both shopkeepers’ daughters, both went to Oxford, both became lawyers.
Both were praised for their openness, sense of purpose and plain speaking. Mrs Thatcher brought down the arrogant old-school Conservative Party, Mrs Mahood wiped the ground for privileged middle-class liberals. Both live for politics, even at the expense of their personal lives. And crucially, both were aware of the concerns many Britons feel about immigration.
Mrs Thatcher spoke of British people feeling “swamped”. Ms Mahmood points out that the scale of the recent challengers is “unprecedented”.
There are huge political differences, of course, but Ms. Mahmood seems to have the same steely courage. And the power to put an end to the virtue-signaling left.
Activists are lining up to condemn him, but they are deprived of the most obvious line of attack: They cannot accuse him of racism.
Ms. Mahood deprived them of that chance in last week’s tense parliamentary clash over immigration, albeit in language that Mrs. Thatcher would never use in public.
That’s his trump card, and he’ll need it because the cards are stacked against him in Labour’s internal politics.
But he can win this fight, and if so, that’s bad news for Angela Rayner. Starmer will surely have dreamed of becoming Labour’s first female prime minister when he leaves, which can’t be too far off.
Red Ange now has real competition, and from someone who is not only brighter and sharper (and a lot less, well, sketchy), but also scores higher on Labour’s originality scale. Bring it on.
