From Thatcher to Brexit: this Tory folly was 40 years in the making | Martin Kettle

Margaret Thatcher wrenched the party away from its pragmatic traditions. Brexit has turned it into a faith-based movement

“I’d like to have led the Conservative party. I’d like to have been prime minister,” confessed a disappointed Conservative politician on Monday. It is proving to be that kind of week for the Tory combatants. Today it was Rory Stewart’s turn to come to terms with the dying of his national leadership dream, as Boris Johnson consolidated his grip on the Tory election in advance of today’s next rounds.

But these words of regret did not come from Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock or any of the earlier fallers in this contest. Instead they were spoken this week by Michael Heseltine, in the final part of the BBC’s excellent five-part documentary, Thatcher: a Very British Revolution. It is what Heseltine said next that speaks most directly of all to the perhaps unsolvable problems facing today’s Tory party. If he had become prime minister, Heseltine said: “It would have been a different country.” He is right about that. But he didn’t. So it isn’t. And that is the Tory party’s problem.

Brexit is the price the party is paying for the unchecked flowering of poisonous political seeds planted under Thatcher

Related: TV debate brought home a terrifying truth: one of these men will be PM | Jonathan Freedland

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