Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as prime minister of the United Kingdom ended 35 years ago this month.
In her final week in office, during a debate in Parliament on inequality, she raised one hand high and the other low to illustrate the gap between rich and poor. Then, with a sharp motion, she thrust both hands upward, showing that, yes, the gap was widening, but everyone was moving up: a development preferable, she believed, to a leveling-down society where envy replaced aspiration.
Baroness Thatcher’s political career was, in large measure, defined by championing freedom and fighting against collectivism. Great Britain was struggling with stagflation after years of socialist-inspired Labour Party policies — nationalization of England’s economy, the excessive empowerment of its trade unions, and high tax rates. She aspired to transform her country into a “get-up-and-go instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it” nation.
What would Thatcher say today, as democratic socialism finds favor again, this time across the Atlantic? Americans are increasingly intrigued by statist policies as a means to make life more affordable.
To those in America who share her commitment to liberty and markets, she would perhaps recite her favorite line from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust: “That which thy fathers bequeath thee, earn it anew if thou wouldst possess it.” It was more than a line of poetry. For her, it was a governing philosophy.
Thatcher earned it anew with bold new approaches to unleash the full human potential of the British people — to steer her nation from lethargy and despondency back to a healthy, strong, self-confident nationalism. She cut taxes and red tape, reined in spending, tightened the money supply, privatized bloated state industries, and took on militant public-sector unions that paralyzed her nation.
Her record was not flawless, but the results were undeniable: She showed the English-speaking world that conservatism need not mean inertia — that a movement rooted in tradition can also be an engine of reform.
Today, on the American Right, our own engine of reform needs tuning. Earlier this month, New York City and Seattle offered possible previews of the consequences of ignoring this task.
Both cities elected socialist mayors who promised a slate of what Thatcher would describe as “sit-back-and-wait-for-it” policies: free healthcare and transit on city buses, government-run grocery stores, and significant hikes to personal, property, and capital gains taxes.
Conservatives might be tempted to dismiss these elections as anomalies; after all, who should be surprised that far-left candidates won elections in deep blue metropolises? It is notable, though, that 75% of New Yorkers between the ages of 18 and 29 supported Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Here, again, skeptics have categorized these as downwardly mobile, highly educated elites.
But could a development beyond reflexive progressivism be driving the new popularity of socialist ideas? And could it spread to purplish districts?
After all, citizens, especially those entering prime working age, who are looking for solutions, are likely to support candidates who present solutions, even ruinous ones. And doubts about mobility naturally breed envy of success and policies that punish it.
One of the defining statistics of the era is the current average age of new homeowners: 40. A generation ago, in the early 1990s, it was 28. Homeownership, often associated with the American dream and upward mobility, is increasingly out of reach for young Americans.
In America, as elsewhere, the last 35 years have brought tectonic structural changes to our economy through rapid globalization, automation, and urbanization. Creative destruction has delivered prosperity, but median real wages have stagnated, wealth inequality has risen, and rates of upward mobility have declined dramatically.
Americans are leveraged by debt, struggling to access mortgages, afford healthcare, and pay for groceries and electricity.
Mix in perceptions of entrenched institutional nepotism and special interest cronyism, and it is no wonder many working Americans think the system is rigged and they don’t have a fair shot at success based on their abilities.
But just as New Yorkers may soon discover, though the problems socialists seek to address are real, the remedies they present are wrong. The only thing socialism equalizes is misery. Thatcher’s hands, representing the haves and yet to haves, both moved upwards. Under socialism, the hands move closer together but not upwards.
No, America’s destiny is not statism.
President Donald Trump has given voice to a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class Americans who have grown frustrated by a leadership class regarded as insular, self-interested, and deficient in traditional standards of respect and character.
This movement has appealed to merit and begun the process of repairing the barnacle-encrusted ladders connecting ambition to opportunity. A process is begun, but we must go further to earn it anew. Until we do, a vacuum remains in which the appeal of socialism as an answer to these societal and economic troubles expands.
A new “hands” speech for our time would begin where Thatcher’s ended — with faith in individual initiative. But it would extend that faith beyond its current trajectory to a shared national obligation: to keep opportunity open.
It would reject redistribution, while acknowledging that dynamism depends on opportunity — that markets thrive only when talent from every corner can grasp the same rungs of advancement, even if outcomes will always be unequal.
It would, in short, ensure that in America, merit is rewarded.
Such a message would not scold or promise handouts. It would reaffirm the moral case for earned success while recognizing that healthy capitalism requires maintenance: investments in education, fair competition, and the rule of law that keep markets open and merit meaningful.
Thatcher’s two hands — one high, one low, both rising — symbolized a society lifting itself together. Our task now is to resume that lift, making sure no hand rises by weighing another down.
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This must be the measuring stick for American democracy and for 21st-century conservative leadership. If the invisible hand of the market is to endure, it must once again be connected to the visible hands that work, build, and rise.
As Thatcher taught us, the work of conservatives is not to preserve the past unchanged, but to earn it anew.
Todd Young is the senior U.S. senator from Indiana. He served as the student representative to Chairwoman Margaret Thatcher at the Institute of United States Studies in London from 2000 to 2001.
