“Every so often, a politician delivers a line that captures public attention – though not always in the way they would have hoped,” said KCL’s professor Bobby Duffy.
But “context matters”, he adds. Agreement with her comments rises far higher – to around half the population (49%) – when people see Thatcher’s full quote.
“Margaret Thatcher was so annoyed that her ‘no such thing as society’ quote was separated from her fuller statement that No 10 later issued a clarification to the Sunday Times,” Duffy added.
The full quote is longer, and people have a more complicated reaction to it.
“We’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society,” Thatcher said in the 1987 Women’s Own interview.
“And there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations.”
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People react differently to different parts of this statement.
Among those who agreed with the longer version, big majorities backed its calls for self-reliance: 58% agreed that “too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it”, 56% said “people have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations”. A slight majority (52%) endorsed the duty to look after oneself and one’s neighbour.
In the context of the longer quote, 15% agreed with the stark declaration that there is “no such thing as society”.
Margaret Thatcher herself was irritated by the quote’s afterlife. “In her 1993 autobiography, Baroness Thatcher pointed out that the rest of the quote was left out,” the report notes.
But politicians can’t always determine which soundbites get remembered.
In 1998, Peter Mandelson – recently ditched as the US ambassador – that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. Just 16% agree with that – but support more than doubled (to 39%), when his often-forgotten qualifier was added: “As long as they pay their taxes.”
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Among Conservatives and Reform UK voters, agreement shot up to 56% and 58% respectively once the tax condition was included.
Keir Starmer’s warning that “we risk becoming an island of strangers” showed the opposite effect.
Nearly six in ten (59%) agreed with the shorter phrase, but support dipped slightly to 54% when people heard his full call, that emphasised “shared rights and obligations”.
Reform UK supporters were the keenest on the short version, with three-quarters backing it, but their enthusiasm once the broader message of rules and responsibility was revealed.
Michael Gove’s 2016 claim that “the people in this country have had enough of experts” landed somewhere in between.
Around four in ten (42%) agreed with the bare line, rising to almost half (47%) when his fuller explanation was included – that he was referring to economists from organisations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who “say they know what is best and get it consistently wrong”.
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In both cases, Reform voters were by far the most likely to agree. Some 62% agreed with the shorter quote, jumping to 65% once the longer quote was included.
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