Theresa May is about to become the most powerful leader in Europe.

DAN HANNAN: 

Theresa May is about to become the most powerful leader in Europe.

Thatcher took over in 1979, at what must be reckoned Britain’s lowest moment.

The country had been in decline since 1945, partly because successive governments had sought to inflate away the vast debts Winston Churchill had run up to win the war and partly because of wrong-headed interventionist policies, including the regulation of prices and wages. She faced constant sniping from within her own party and was never much liked by the electorate. The magnitude of her achievement was this: that she defeated every vested interest, took Britain from the being weakest economy in Western Europe to being the strongest, went on to win three general elections and the Cold War – and did it all from a position of relative weakness.

May starts from an altogether more enviable place. She was the overwhelming choice of Conservative MPs – so overwhelming, indeed, that her rivals pulled out of the race. She faces no serious opposition from the other parties. Labor has retreated into far-Left introversion and, according to opinion polls, is heading for its worst defeat since the 1930s, when it first emerged as one of the two main parties. UKIP, which came third in terms of the popular vote at the last election (though the vagaries of the electoral system gave it just one MP) has secured its primary objective – that is, it helped win a referendum on leaving the European Union. Its sole MP, Douglas Carswell, is standing down with a cheerful smile, job done. Its voters are drifting to the party that is actually delivering Brexit, namely the Conservatives.

What May shares with Thatcher is a genuine willingness to turn back the ratchet effect.

28Posted at 1:09 pm by Stephen Green