Margaret Thatcher’s rejection of consensus was symptomatic of an anti-democratic tendency in a political system dominated by the executive

One of the positions receiving widespread agreement in the ongoing debate about the legacy of Margaret Thatcher has been that she was a politician who rejected consensus. Martin Smith reflects on this claim, taking issue with the underlying assumption that this was a virtue of the former Prime Minister. He argues that this hostility towards consensus has important implications for democracy and policy which have tended to be overlooked.