Below is a transcript of a speech delivered by Andrew Griffith MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, at the ‘Remaking Conservatism’ Margaret Thatcher Conference hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies on March 17, 2025.
This is not an easy time for those who value freedom, enterprise, and the monumental work Margaret Thatcher did to save this country.
I was a child of Thatcher. Born in the 1970s, I grew up in the 1980s and I graduated into the economy she made possible. An economy filled with opportunity created by private enterprise.
I spent 25 years in business, and it taught me that growth comes from businesses. That jobs are the result of risks taken by risk takers.
Unfortunately, this is something fewer and fewer understand in politics today.
Nobody understood it better than the man I was lucky to have as a mentor. Who inspired me to cross the rubicon to Westminster five years ago. Charles Moore called him ‘The most business minded practitioner of Thatcherism’. That was the late David Young, Lord Young of Graffham.
I’m often reminded of him today, and of the dark days of the 1970s that inspired him to leave behind a successful career, to help Mrs Thatcher and Keith Joseph.
In his memoirs, David wrote about that time that:
The number of strikes continued to increase as the economy continued to decline, and by 1975 the government had completely run out of money and was forced to ask the IMF for a loan. We were now well and truly the sick man of Europe and even my limitless optimism was subdued – my wife and I even toyed with the idea of emigration.
We are not yet quite there. But the echoes are, and they are getting louder.
We again live in a time when wealth creators are leaving the UK in droves. A millionaire leaves this country every 45 minutes.
When many young people are more likely to see their future in Melbourne than in Manchester or to exchange Docklands for Dubai.
When those who work hard often keep little more in income after tax than those on benefits.
Last week’s Employment Rights Bill marked the first time since the 1970’s that a government handed more power over the economy to the trade unions.
Blair didn’t, Brown didn’t, but this government did in its first 100 days.
Above all, we again live in a time when enterprise is stifled by taxes and regulations imposed by politicians with little knowledge of business. We now need a new generation of people like David Young. People who understand the problem-solving power of the private sector and want to place it at the heart of Government.
Lord Young wrote that in his youth he became disenchanted with politics because:
The Conservative Party, whenever it was their time in office, changed little and left the economy largely unreformed by the time they lost office. I felt their only ambition lay in delaying, rather than stopping, an eventual socialist society.
Whether we Conservatives like it or not, this same perception is felt by many today.
It is why, as Kemi said, we need to be honest with the British people.
So here is a hard truth:
We are the sixth-largest economy in the world. But on a GDP per capita basis, we are not even in the Top 10. We are not in the Top 15. We are not even in the Top 20.
Just last week, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research found that living standards in parts of the UK are now so poor they have fallen behind Slovenia and Lithuania.
We must stop measuring our economic success by whatever number looks best in the moment and begin doing so by real GDP per capita growth.
We must stop our politicians comparing ourselves just to the G7.
With the exception of the US, that’s just the club of other aging, deindustrialising and low growth economies. It’s a major category error.
We have been running in the ‘seniors race’ and wondering why we are being overtaken by younger, nimbler competitors.
We must instead look to the much faster growing G20 as our pace car for who our country should be competing with.
When I went to university, that meant a good chance at getting a good job. That quickly meant being able to buy a home and start a family. Today, that’s simply not the case.
London should be one of the most liveable and desirable cities on the planet. Instead, it is increasingly crime ridden, exorbitantly expensive, and desperately lacking in density.
The Centre for Policy Studies has done phenomenal work on just this. The ‘Justice for the Young’ report, great body of work on housing and important work on immigration.
Going to university, getting a good job, and having children today can mean being faced with the government taking 66p out of every extra pound you earn. And if you succeed and happen to earn over £100,000 a year, you risk, at moments, that rising to a marginal rate of 71% to the Treasury.
That is far too high.
Young people today face insurmountable housing prices, with an affordability ratio that has almost tripled since 1997, especially in London.
And even if they somehow earn three times what their parents did, they still face over-regulated access to credit which locks many out of a mortgage. Young people are not incentivised to strive. They are not encouraged to stay in this country. And they are not able to fulfil the very ordinary, very Conservative dreams they have of a home and a family.
That must change.
That is why, as your Shadow Business Secretary, I am committed to once again making us the party of enterprise.
The party of opportunity for young people, small business owners and the self-employed.
The party of risk takers, entrepreneurs, and those who make things happen.
In short, the party of Thatcher.
And I know that my party is led by someone who feels exactly the same way.
The Conservative Party is under new leadership and Kemi Badenoch is leading us back to the principles and policies that we have one final chance to take.
The CPS has a long history of thinking the impossible. In the last year alone, it catalysed a political sea change on immigration with ‘Taking Back Control‘.
We Conservatives must go beyond talking tough on immigration to being tough, with policies that genuinely discriminate in favour of our own citizens over others who wish to come here. This is the kind of CPS-led idea that will change this country for the better.
None of this will be easy. Thatcher spent five long years in opposition, from 1974 when she founded the CPS with Keith Joseph to 1979.
Mass popularity did not come swiftly, it took years. And even when electoral success did come, those first years in power were difficult.
Radical changes like the removal of exchange controls, creating capital mobility, were greeted with caution or derision.
There was a battle within the Party with many saying she was too radical.
Challenging a consensus and forming a new one usually is.
No one should stand by and watch the destruction of our country.
Like Thatcher, the Conservative Party again needs a generation of Keith Josephs. A generation of David Youngs, Nigel Vinsons and Arthur Seldons. A generation of thinkers and doers, who will commit themselves to something that happens once a lifetime.
We also need data obsessives and analysts to tease out the failings of the state.
We need Twitter movements and podcasters to rouse awareness on single issues.
This is the opportunity to re-build your country and there is a role for everyone.
We desperately need a seismic shift away from the past 20 years and toward a smaller, simpler set of priorities that take back control on behalf of the voters.
To do this job, you have to want to change things. You have to believe in change, and you have to take risks. Thatcher and the people around her did that.
Mrs Thatcher wrote in her memoirs that ‘David Young did not claim to understand politics: but he understood how to make things happen’.
Today, we need people who make things happen.
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