ABSTRACT
Little of broad political significance that happened in the 1990s can be explained without acknowledging the longer-term influence – both positive and negative – of Margaret Thatcher. John Major thought he had exorcised the spectre of Thatcher. Major was a sore disappointment to Thatcher on two levels. First, she considered him a weak leader who failed to deal decisively, as she thought she always had done, with political crises. Second, he failed to follow her example – especially over Europe. Overall, Major was no keeper of the Thatcherite flame. Rates of growth in GDP and, especially, consumer expenditure, were lower in the 1990s than in the 1980s, allowing Thatcher's supporters to claim that weaker political leadership led to diminished economic rewards. In 1992–93, Thatcher opposed ratification of the Maastricht Treaty that, among other things, promised to increase the size of the European community and looked forward to the emergence of a common European Union defence policy.
