Thatcher didn’t just change the shape of Britain – but the heart and soul of the British people

The shape of Britain will be forever marked by Margaret Thatcher, from the skyscraper-jagged skyline of our cities to the sparse social housing she left behind. But it is perhaps the changes that are not carved into our land, but rather the ones that have shaped our view of ourselves, our country and our relationships, that have had the most profound effect.

In an interview with The Sunday Times in 1981, Mrs Thatcher announced that the object was not just to change the economy, but to change the heart and soul of the British people. It was this endeavour that would prove the most successful for her campaign. It was one that would indeed alter our souls, our hearts, our relationships, our institutions and our politics ruthlessly, leaving no stone, no home and no heart unturned and unscathed.  

Thatcher’s mission of turning postwar economics into what we now call neoliberal economics meant new freedom for the markets. It meant replacing state power with market power and relinquishing governance from the hands of the people to the hands of competition. Where postwar economics had brought about the NHS, social housing and high taxes for the rich, Thatcher’s economics meant privatisation, deregulation and tax cuts for the rich.

All of a sudden, everything had a price; everything could be bought and sold, and everything was up for grabs if you had the money and the risk at your disposal. Competition was the mantra of this new political, economic and philosophical agenda, and Margaret Thatcher was on a mission to not only make this a pillar of the “British work ethic” but to normalise it so deeply that we accepted these values as a natural order, as human nature and as a driver of civilisation.  

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Thatcher paved the way for the age of the entrepreneur. Survival of the fittest competition meant not only the promise of winners, but the promise of many, many more losers. As she privatised Britain to its very bones, the country’s blood would run cold with cashflow and cut-throat market principles. As Thatcher stated in her interview with Woman’s Own magazine in 1987, “There is no such thing as society.” 

Neoliberalism did not just mean changing the heart and soul, but selling them too. And as the safety nets of social services were pulled out from underneath Britain, selling yourself became not only a requirement but a matter of survival in an economy she predicated on Darwinism. 

Read more:

• Margaret Thatcher’s legacy continues to cast its long shadow
• Yes, we’re milking Margaret Thatcher for profit and publicity. It’s what she would have wanted
• The ‘Yo-yo Homes’, revealed: How ex-council tenants make over £200k selling homes back to councils

The age of the entrepreneur doesn’t seem like an entirely awful thing at first glance. We often hear success stories of great ideas and opportunities that were seized at the perfect time. But behind this gleaming mask of fruitfulness and productivity lies the true face of a dismantled, disconnected and alienated society that has run out of things to sell. It is then we begin to sell off parts of ourselves.

In a survival-of-the-fittest economy, performing at one’s best is of utmost importance. Whether it means tracking your fitness, steps and sleep on a watch, drinking your meals in convenient shakes, or performing your gender to the very best of your ability, you must be marketable and you must be fit to weather the daily toll of capitalism that has slipped from our control.

The rise of the entrepreneurial self means replacing the joys of food with convenience shakes, the joys of togetherness with social media, the joys of creativity with marketability. We have replaced the very essence of what makes us human with a market ideology that reduces all to stocks and shares, with numbers over our heads and targets on our backs. 

Many philosophers including Michel Foucault, Byung-Chul Han and Wendy Brown, regard this new age of neoliberalism as the age of homo economicus, a human completely financialised and understood only through the metric of the market.

We can see this in the way the likes of Andrew Tate spout the importance of being a “high-value man” to attract a “high-value woman”. Rooted in traditional, oppressive gender roles and the exploitation of women as a commodity, Tate is a phenomenon created by Thatcher in a strange amalgamation of her political, economic and personal philosophies.

In the same vein, Bonnie Blue and her shocking sexual stunts that become progressively more dangerous and extreme presents an endpoint to this self-optimisation and auto-exploitation where one’s body is sacrificed at the altar of neoliberalism, reduced to the hits, views, clicks and shares that her harmful stunts produce.  

Thatcher’s legacy, then, makes greed the sole philosophy and self-exploitation the method of our cultural malaise. As we face a mental health crisis on a profound scale and far-right rhetoric that speaks to the most aggrieved losers of a rigged game, remembering the values that truly do make us human has never been more vital. Society does exist, but it is the power of togetherness, compassion and
kindness that it must be built on – not the power of greed.  

Louisa Toxvaerd Munch teaches critical theory and English at the University of Warwick. She is completing a PhD in nostalgia and the rise of the far right, and has a TikTok and Instagram channel discussing theory, politics and contemporary culture.

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