Nick Clegg tribute to Thatcher in full
Mr Speaker on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I’d like to pay tribute to Lady Thatcher.
We send our sincere condolences to her family and friends, in particular her children Mark and Carol.
Like all of us here who are not members of the Conservative party, and as someone who strongly disagreed with a lot of what she did, I’ve thought long and hard about what to say.
I’m also a Sheffield MP – a city where the mere mention of her name even now elicits strong reactions.
I’d like to think she’d be perhaps pleased that she still provokes trepidation and uncertainty among leaders of other parties – even when she’s not here herself, eyeballing us across the House.
Mr Speaker, that those of us who are not from her party can shun the tenets of Thatcherism and yet still respect Margaret Thatcher is part of what was so remarkable about her.
And it is in that spirit that I’d like to make three short observations.
First, whether you liked her or disliked her, it is impossible to deny the indelible imprint Margaret Thatcher made both on this nation and the wider world.
She was among those very rare leaders who became a towering historical figure not as written in the history books, but when still in the prime of her political life.
Whatever else is said about her, Margaret Thatcher created a paradigm: setting the parameters for economic, political and social debate for decades to come.
She drew the lines on a political map that we, here, are still navigating today.
Second, she was one of the most caricatured figures in modern British politics, yet she was easily one of the most complex.
On the one hand, she is remembered as the eponymous ideologue, responsible for her own ‘ism’.
Yet in reality much of her politics was subtle; pragmatic; often driven by events.
Margaret Thatcher was a staunch patriot and much more comfortable reaching out across the Atlantic than across the Channel.
Yet she participated in one of the most profound periods of European integration – she herself an architect of the Single Market.
And, while she was a Conservative to her core, leading a party which traditionally likes to conserve things – she held a deep aversion to the status quo.
Indeed she was restive about the future, determined to use politics as a force for reform, never fearing short-term disruption in pursuit of long-term change.
In many ways a traditionalist, she was one of the most iconoclastic politicians of our age.
So Margaret Thatcher was far from the cardboard cut out sometimes imagined.
And, for me, the best tribute to her is not to consign her to a simplified heroine or villain, but to remember her with all the nuance, unresolved complexity and paradox she possessed.
Finally there was an extraordinary, even unsettling, directness about her political presence.
I remember vividly, aged twenty, reading that Margaret Thatcher had said that there was no such thing as society.
I was dismayed.
This was not the kind of thing that a wide-eyed, idealistic, social anthropology student wanted to hear.
But with hindsight what strikes me is that, whilst I disagreed with the untempered individualism which those words implied, I never for a second thought that she was being cynical, or that she was striking a pose or taking a position for short-term effect.
You always knew with Margaret Thatcher that she believed what she said.
It is interesting to reflect on how she would have reacted to today’s political culture of 24 hour news, pollsters and focus groups.
She seemed blissfully indifferent to the popularity of what she said, entirely driven instead by the conviction of what she said.
Somehow, her directness made you feel as if she was arguing directly with you.
As if it was a clash of her convictions against yours.
And as a result you somehow felt as if you knew her, even if you did not.
Whether she inspired or confronted, led or attacked you, she did it all with uncluttered clarity.
Mr Speaker her memory will no doubt continue to divide opinion and stir deep emotion.
But as we as a nation say farewell to a figure who loomed so large, one thing’s for sure: the memory of her will continue undimmed, strong and clear for years to come – in keeping with the unusual, unique character of Margaret Thatcher herself.
