ABSTRACT
As we saw in the previous chapter, the 1980s sparked a craze in academic circles for analysing the phenomenon of ‘Thatcherism’. Inspired by the apparent distinctiveness of the New Right project, the vast majority of British political scientists clamoured to take snapshots of the idiosyncrasies of the Thatcherite agenda. From this, it was overwhelmingly ascertained that the Thatcher years marked an exceptional period in postwar British politics. Yet, this prevailing belief tended to be based less upon the success of the Thatcher administrations in implementing their own policy strategies than upon the variety of ways in which they contrived to uncouple previous ones. In this sense, Mrs Thatcher earned a degree of notoriety amongst her critics, not so much for her own policy achievements, as her part in killing off the ‘postwar consensus’ and the collectivist values around which this was supposedly constructed.
