Below is a transcript of the keynote speech delivered by the Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch MP at the ‘Remaking Conservatism’ Margaret Thatcher Conference hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies on March 17, 2025.
Today, we honour Margaret Thatcher – not just as Britain’s first female Prime Minister, but as the leader who saved our country. She didn’t arrive in office to manage decline. She came to reverse it.
When she took over, Britain was broken. High taxes punished success. Unions held the government hostage. Inflation soared, businesses collapsed and the state grew bigger, taking more control over people’s lives while delivering less.
Before my father died, I remember asking him why he never bought a home in the UK when he could have. He said: ‘No one really wanted to live in the UK in the 1970s. It was a country in decline, so many wealthy people were leaving that their homes were being sold cheap.’
Mrs Thatcher changed all that. She cut taxes, backed business and gave people the right to own their homes and build their own futures. She stood firm against socialism, bureaucracy and decline – and she won.
For me, Margaret Thatcher wasn’t just a historical figure. She shaped my entire view of politics, of leadership and of Britain itself.
Many of you will know that I was born in London, but I spent much of my childhood in Nigeria – where I saw firsthand what happens when a country embraces socialism and autocracy.
There was no Thatcher-style leadership. No belief in free markets, in personal responsibility or in hard work being rewarded. Instead, there was corruption, state control and economic decline.
I remember constant power cuts, shortages and the fear that came with living in a place where the state was strong but the people were weak.
I also remember boys in my class at school mocking girls and telling us our place was in the kitchen. Two words always shut them up: Margaret Thatcher.
When I moved back to the UK as a teenager, I came not to the country in decline my father remembered, but to a country transformed by Thatcher’s revolution. A country that had confidence, energy and opportunity.
I saw what leadership could do. What Conservative principles could achieve.
And I realised that Britain was special.
I became a Conservative because I saw what happens when government overreaches, when socialism takes hold and when the individual is crushed under the weight of bureaucracy and the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Margaret Thatcher taught me something powerful:
If you want to change a country, you need courage. You need conviction. And you must never, ever back down from doing what is right.
That belief has driven me ever since. It drove me in business, it drove me in politics and it drives me today as leader of the Conservative Party.
Lady Thatcher didn’t just transform Britain at home. She reestablished our country as a global power.
Not just through economic revival – though she did that – but by standing firm in the world, protecting British interests and refusing to be bullied.
She understood a fundamental truth: A strong nation is clear about who its enemies are and what its interests are. She knew that appeasement never works and that weakness invites aggression.
Her decision to send a naval fleet thousands of miles to reclaim the Falkland Islands was risky. Many in Whitehall advised against it. The UN wanted Britain to negotiate them away. Others thought it wasn’t worth the fight.
But Mrs Thatcher knew what was at stake.
The Falklands were British. And when they were threatened, she didn’t hesitate. She stood up for our sovereignty, our people and our global reputation. She didn’t talk. She acted.
Compare that to today.
Labour has given away British territory in the Chagos Islands. Billions of taxpayers’ money wasted on appeasement – handing over land that is strategically vital, ignoring Chagossians who have proudly waved the Union Jack and proclaimed loyalty to the Crown.
The excuses we hear – about UN court rulings and electromagnetic signals – are nonsense.
British territory is British territory.
Thatcher knew that. She defended it. Labour surrenders it.
Thatcher led Britain through the Cold War – a time when our way of life was under direct threat. She was pragmatic about our enemies. She saw the Soviet Union for what it was: a hostile force determined to challenge the West.
She didn’t hesitate to use economic power as a weapon.
She understood that rapid mobilisation forces a quicker, more pragmatic resolution than years of war.
Would she have supported a moratorium on gas exports that helps Russia? No.
Would she have failed to see what’s at stake in Ukraine? No.
She would have understood – as we must – that we cannot return to a world where enemy states redraw borders through war.
A weak Britain emboldens our enemies. A strong Britain, clear in its purpose, keeps us safe.
Britain is once again on the wrong path. Labour has returned to the old, failed ideas of high spending, high taxes and more government control. The state is bigger than ever, yet failing in its basic duties. Immigration is too high, crime is rising, businesses are over-regulated and working people are being squeezed.
Conservatives have to take responsibility for some of this too. We have to fix it.
We cannot meet this moment with half-measures. We must be as bold as Thatcher was.
That is why, under my leadership, the Conservative Party will return to first principles – just as she did.
Tomorrow I will be launching the Conservative Party’s biggest policy renewal programme in 50 years. We are not announcing detailed policies tomorrow, but we know where we need to get to. We know that:
- We will cut taxes and scrap burdensome regulations – so businesses can grow, jobs can be created and hard work is rewarded.
- We know we will fight for secure borders and law and order – because a country that cannot defend itself, at home or abroad, is a country in decline.
- We know we must shrink the size of the state and end government waste – because people should decide how to spend their money, not politicians.
- And we know we must stand up for Britain’s values and history – because we should never apologise for our success.
Margaret Thatcher understood that you don’t fix a broken country by making the state bigger – you fix it by making the people stronger. And that is exactly what the Conservative Party under my leadership will do.
And it starts… with renewal.
Just as she rebuilt Britain, we must renew our party, rebuild our country and save our future.
Margaret Thatcher didn’t fight to make Britain comfortable with decline. She fought to make it great again.
Britain’s future will not be written by the socialists, the bureaucrats or the doom-mongers. It will be written by us.
I wouldn’t be standing here today, as the leader of the Conservative Party, without Margaret Thatcher’s legacy. To be honest, none of us would have heard of the Centre for Policy Studies if she had failed.
It is our job now to make sure that we all, here today, live up to her legacy.
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