Those two great leaders understood that freedom and progress are not accidents
The lesson of Reagan and Thatcher is that peace and progress are born from strength and weakness invites danger. Labour have forgotten that truth.
I wonder what Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher would have made of the Labour government this week – all but admitting to collapsing a trial involving national security because they weren’t prepared to stand up to China. The weakness Keir Starmer and his government have shown will haunt them for many years to come.
It’s hard not to compare this saga with the immense strength of will and clear sense of duty that led to the West defeating the Soviet Union and ending the Cold War.
Today I will unveil a statue in London of the man who did more than any other to help in that historic fight against communism, Ronald Reagan.
Three decades ago, he showed us that the strength of the West has never rested on geography, but on conviction, and the shared belief that freedom, courage and enterprise are worth defending, whatever the cost.
My family lived briefly in Omaha, Nebraska in 1985 and 1986. As a 6-year-old child in Reagan’s America, I didn’t know I was living through the glory days of the free world. Britain had Margaret Thatcher; America had Reagan. Together, they were a force of nature. They didn’t manage decline; they reversed it.
Both were in many ways political outsiders. Both found allies hard to come by at home sometimes. But by leaning on each other for strength, they changed the world with their shared convictions.
They believed in individual freedom, not big government. They tamed inflation, broke the power of militant unions, and stared down the Soviet Union until it blinked. They showed that peace is achieved not by kowtowing to tyrants, but by standing firm against them.
After many years of seeming to forget, the West finally seems to be waking up to Ronald Reagan’s famous warning: “Peace is maintained through strength; weakness only invites aggression.” He was right then and he’s right now.
We’ve seen that logic at work again in Gaza. Those who were grandstanding and appeasing achieved nothing – but those who used power wisely delivered results.
This is the leadership Reagan and Thatcher encompassed: you make peace by being strong enough that your enemies want it too.
This week brought a reminder of what real progress looks like. Among the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics is Professor Joel Mokyr – the historian who showed that Britain’s success wasn’t built on empire or exploitation, but on ideas.
Mokyr showed that the Industrial Revolution, the greatest leap in living standards in human history, began here because this country believed in freedom: freedom to think, to trade, to challenge, to profit. Britain’s genius wasn’t coal or colonies. It was curiosity. It was craftsmen and scientists swapping ideas in coffee houses and workshops. It was faith in human ingenuity, not faith in government.
It’s a reminder that real progress comes from invention, not intervention. From the bottom up, not the top down. It is an intellectual victory for Thatcherism itself: the belief that prosperity and liberty are two sides of the same coin.
Contrast that with what we see from today’s Left. They want to regulate, restrict, and re-educate. They see entrepreneurs as problems to be managed, not heroes to be celebrated. They talk about “fairness,” yet punish effort. They believe government is the solution to every problem, forgetting Reagan’s great truth that government is the problem when it crushes enterprise and kills initiative.
And when it comes to foreign policy, they’ve learned nothing. The Labour government tiptoes around dictators, terrified of offending anyone. They mistake performative diplomacy for strength. They talk endlessly about “values,” but have no idea what theirs are.
If we in Britain want to thrive again – to build, invent, and lead then we must recover that confidence. Drill in the North Sea. Back our industries. Unleash our innovators. Stop treating profit like a dirty word. Protect free speech like Reagan protected liberty.
We may have drifted from our principles before, but no longer. It’s time Britain remembered that formula. This is what the Conservative Party under my leadership stands for now. It’s why we’re the only party brave enough and competent enough to deliver a stronger economy and stronger security. Weakness never built a factory, never lifted a family out of poverty, and never kept a nation safe.
The “special relationship” wasn’t about sentiment. Thatcher and Reagan understood that freedom and progress are not accidents of history. They are achievements – hard-won and easily lost.
And if we’re serious about leading again in Britain, in the West, in the world – we need a bit less handwringing and a lot more Reagan and Thatcher.
