Keir Starmer has condemned Margaret Thatcher for doing “terrible things”, just days after praising her for “setting loose Britain’s natural entrepreneurialism”.
After the Labour leader faced a backlash from his MPs over his comments about the former prime minister, he told a dinner in Glasgow she did things he “profoundly disagrees with”.
Sir Keir was asked by an audience member at the Scottish Labour gala if he was a fan of Mrs Thatcher, and said: “No, absolutely not. She did terrible things, particularly here in Scotland which everybody in this room, myself included, profoundly disagrees with.”
The comments, reported by the Daily Record, come after Sir Keir said Mrs Thatcher had effected “meaningful change” in Britain.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has defended Sir Keir Starmer’s comments on Margaret Thatcher. (Andrew Milligan/PA)
In a Sunday Telegraph article, he said: “Every moment of meaningful change in modern British politics begins with the realisation that politics must act in service of the British people, rather than dictating to them.
“Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism. Tony Blair reimagined a stale, outdated Labour Party into one that could seize the optimism of the late Nineties.”
The comments sparked fury among left-wingers, with Labour MP Beth Winter telling The Independent the Thatcher government, which ran from 1979 to 1990, “devastated communities with the deliberate destruction of the mining industry”.
She added: “Policies like the grossly iniquitous poll tax and the great privatisation rip-off offs were the hallmarks of Thatcherism.”
And Liverpool Riverside MP Kim Johnson said Mrs Thatcher is “not someone Labour supporters should look up to”.
The comments also went down poorly in Scotland, with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar saying Mrs Thatcher “decimated” the country.
Sir Keir rowed back on the comments, telling the BBC the point of his article was to “distinguish political leaders … between those that had a plan and those that drifted essentially”.
And at the Scottish Labour dinner on Thursday night, he said: “The point I was trying to make in a piece that we penned last week is that there are some political leaders who have a mission, a plan, that they implement.
“And Attlee, of course, was one of them – the ‘new Jerusalem’. Thatcher, whether you liked her or you didn’t like her, you couldn’t say she didn’t have a plan or a mission.”
