Category: Margaret Thatcher Centre Freedom Festival

The weekend of Saturday 22^nd and Sunday 23^rd March 2025, saw the Third Margaret Thatcher Centre Freedom Festival held at the University of Buckingham. 

“Why do Conservative governments abandon their principles in office“

The festival consisted of a day and half of keynote addresses, panel discussions and a gala dinner with Lord David Frost speaking.

Many good points were made, and interesting discussions held.  Mahyar Tousi also posted a clip about one of the speeches on YouTube.  Listed below are some of our slightly random take aways from the weekend:

‘the entire budget of the Foreign Office is a rounding error in the DWP’

The first panel discussion was a favourite with James Price, Giles Dilnot and Reem Ibrahim discussing Free Trade.  A discussion where everyone had interesting points, and it was easy to agree with some of what all said.

Lord Young of Acton (Toby Young) gave a keynote address and asked ‘Why do Conservative governments abandon their principles in office’

Why was Margaret Thatcher the exception?

Speaking about the lockdown, Lord Young pointed out that the UK plan was indeed taken up, just not by the UK, but by Sweden.

He went on to also say that the Government Report of April 2020 showed an expected and additional 185,000 deaths due to the NHS moving to emergency care only, when we locked down expecting to save at most 200,000 lives. Toby also said:

 ‘Lessons aren’t learnt they are abandoned’

‘Sometimes the best path is to do nothing’

Finally Toby talked about his current major concern with the Employment Rights bill which extends the requirement to protect employees from harassment by third parties, including overheard conversations – The Free Speech Union now have a campaign for this to Say No to ‘Banter Bouncers’.

“Sometimes the best path is to do nothing”

Allison Pearson spoke about the investigation by the police into her tweet.  She mentioned how the Police Report was leaked to the Guardian.  Also, that the ‘NCHI reversed the burden of proof, you are no longer innocent until proven guilty, and that ‘Police who won’t come out for a burglary will come out for this’.

Allison went on to announce that she is instigating legal proceedings against Essex Police and the Polcie Commissioner Robert Hurst.

“Police who won’t come out for a burglary will come out for this”

In a panel discussion on Cheerfulness & The Culture War, Emma Trimble (née Webb) wared against ‘the right falling into a purity spiral’, this became a reasonable often repeated and timely thought.  On the same panel Mark Littlewood talked of ‘a conservative movement, whatever your political party is’.  Mark also talked about the need to ‘reset Britain to pre-Blair 1997’.  Tim Scott also on the panel pointed out that ‘we also have to be honest about the things that are good’.  Emma also pointed out that we need to get rid of the Supreme Court.

In a Panel about the rule of law Dr Bryn Harris of the Free Speech Union pointed out that ‘free societies don’t regulate what people say at work’.

In the next panel on Academic Freedom, Professor Eric Kaufmann talked about the need to get funding to support right wing views in universities. 

The evening finished with a gala dinner with Lord David Frost in which special awards were given to Allison Pearson and Professor James Tooley.

On the Sunday Catherine McBride OBE pointed out that the ‘UK has coal, oil and gas, and for some reason the government has decided to keep all 3 in the ground’.  Also, that ‘Germany has reverted to coal and for some reason we refuse to sell it to them’.

Baroness Claire Fox gave a keynote address and started by noting that given her background it was ‘disconcerting to be speaking at a conference for Margaret Thatcher’.  Claire pointed out that at the Battle of Ideas events she organises the left has diminished and that ‘my tribe, the left have disintegrated into snowflakes’.  She also raised concerns that whilst the left created a template, the right may be copying it with an increasing ‘victim narrative’ and warned us against it.  She also noted that much of the backlash against the Netflix series Adolescent was from those who refused to watch it. 

You can find more information about these events at https://thatchercentre.com/the-freedom-festival-2025/.

“UK has coal, oil and gas, and for some reason the government has decided to keep all 3 in the ground”

Gawain Towler spoke about seeing Brexit Party MEPS, Claire Fox and Ann Widdecombe walking towards him and thinking ‘how have we done this?’

The last panel called for people to get involved, pointed out that winning matters, and finally that we need to make the case for capitalism.

“we need to make the case for capitalism”

The weekend of Saturday 23^rd and Sunday 24^th March 2024, saw the second Margaret Thatcher Centre Freedom Festival held at the University of Buckingham.

Following on from the inaugural event last year the two days consisted of a series of keynote addresses, panel discussions and a gala dinner with Jacob Rees-Mogg speaking.

As one might expect given current polling there was a somewhat sedated attitude among attendees and delegates.  Whilst the festival was non-partisan it was attended by a handful of MPs and many panellists were affiliated to the Conservative Party.  Most bemoaned the lack of achievement of 14 years of Conservative led government.  The two achievements referenced on multiple occasions were the PISA rankings in Reading, and of course achieving Brexit.  In the case of Brexit this has not been delivered for Northern Ireland, and what was delivered was despite rather than because of the Conservative Party’s corporate position.  Talk was often of reform, both of the Conservative party, especially in the case of candidate selection, and the party Reform, who many attendees would be voting for.  In a room at the Margaret Thatcher Centre, hosting an event named after Margaret Thatcher, for the most part the Conservative Party had lost the room.

Among the weekends highlights was Lord Frost’s keynote address in which he described what might be coined as Frost’s Four Freedoms:

1. National Freedom – the right to run your own country.  The idea that a country has the right to be self-governing and that a country has a national demos.
2. Free Speech – In a free country you must have the right to free speech.
3. Economic Freedom – This is perhaps best described in a quote from Margaret Thatcher: “A man’s right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, and to have the state as servant and not as master — they are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom all our other freedoms depend.” 
4. Freedom to Transmit – A freedom to hand on our culture to the next generation.  Our belief that every individual is special, our cultural Christianity, the beliefs that allowed us to build western civilisation.  A freedom to build, own and hand on. 

On Economic Freedom it was pointed out this compares to the current government who have just introduced a Football Regulator.  After 14 years of Conservative led government, the state often sees itself as the master, and the people and their businesses as it’s servants.

In later discussions, we felt The Freedom to Transmit really is the freedom that encourages a culture that plants a tree in the knowledge that future generations will be there to see it grow, a culture that writes an ‘Established date’ sign on a business believing it will prosper for many years to come. 

Tim Montgomerie the founder of Conservative Home and UnHerd.com spoke of what went wrong in the 14 years of Conservative government, and summarised what the Right needs to do in 5 areas:

1. Get rid of a lot of people who are currently Conservative MPs.  Too many Conservative MPs are simply in no way conservative.
2. We need to be more gracious towards each other.  This may seem like it contradicts the first task, but once you have a conservative movement, you have to agree on basic principles, but not every last detail, and most importantly you need to work together.
3. We often talk of ‘the State’ and ‘the Market’ but don’t talk about ‘Society’.  We live in communities, and in families.  Conservatism doesn’t spend enough time talking about our society.
4. Cut the demand side of government.  We all know that the government is too big, but we always look at cutting the supply side of government the size of departments, spending etc.  We need to instead look at cutting the demand for government.  One way is to build a lot more houses, another is to rebuild the family.
5. We need to do less politics.  Elections are too important, politicians have too much power.  We should all go to church, join clubs and get out more.

Some other general points made on the day were that we (the Right) need to get more people onto public appointments and quangos.  Conservative Home regularly publishes opportunities at https://conservativehome.com/public-appointments/.

Conor Burns MP made some suggestions of what the Conservatives should do in their remaining time in office.  This included continuing to sign the US State level ‘Memoranda of Understanding’, like that recently signed with Texas.  They also should focus on what the Conservative Party wants from a leader, rather than who they want as a leader.

The point was also made that we need to make the case for Free Markets, specifically:

• Profit is a good thing.  Profit provides the dividends for our pensions.
• Capitalism helps people live longer.  It is responsible for improving the lives of billions.
• Competition drives up standards.