Theresa May was an 18-year-old undergraduate at St Hugh’s College, Oxford when Margaret Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975. She had not yet left the slight mark on Oxford student politics that she would before going down from the university. Much like Mrs Thatcher at the same place 30 years previously, she was a relatively impecunious, provincial girl with no very obvious glittering prospects. And yet, according to a female friend who knew her, when she heard that a woman had for the first time been chosen to lead the Tories, Theresa May’s reaction was one of irritation. “I wanted to be first and she got there first,” she is quoted as saying.

 

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL DALEY

It takes a lot of chutzpah, and possibly a touch of madness, for a young person ungroomed for greatness to respond in such terms. Doubtless there are other women now aged 60 who, having expressed lofty political ambitions in 1975, got nowhere. For all that, I like this anecdote in Rosa Prince’s superlative new biography, Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister (Biteback, £20), because it connects May to Thatcher at an early age, and invites us to ponder the many arresting similarities, as well some notable differences, between our two female Tory prime ministers.

Both became leaders of their party at a time of crisis. In Thatcher’s case, inflation was running at more than 20 per cent, the economy was sclerotic and the unions rampant. In May’s case, a fractured country faces arduous negotiations and an inevitably uncertain future outside the European Union. There is a danger that the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, will succeed in turning Brexit into a grievance, and prise Scotland away from the United Kingdom. Terrorism is a shared threat — the Provisional IRA for Thatcher, and the Islamic variety in the case of Theresa May, as the recent outrage perpetrated by the British-born Khalid Masood in Westminster attests. This was the biggest crisis so far of her prime ministership. Despite these serious challenges, Mrs May appears mistress of all she surveys, facing as she does a hopelessly-led Opposition, and having for the moment seen off the Remainers in the Commons and the Lords. But I am sure she is aware of the magnitude of the task that lies before her.

On the whole, Thatcher succeeded as Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990 in salvaging Britain, albeit at a considerable social cost. Can Theresa May slay her arguably even more fearsome dragons? And what kind of country will she leave behind once — if — Brexit is successfully accomplished?

The enormity of the respective challenges of the two women is only the start of it. Reading Prince’s book, one is continually struck by similarities of background and experience. As the grammar school and Oxford-educated Margaret Thatcher slowly clambered up the greasy pole, she demonstrated a capacity for hard work and assiduousness that has also been noted in the grammar school and Oxford-educated Theresa May. Neither woman was steeped in a knowledge of history or especially well read, the one having studied chemistry, the other geography, and both were considered more practical than intellectual before becoming leaders. Nor, during their competent ministerial careers, were they often thought of as future prime ministers, save by themselves and possibly their husbands. Against most people’s expectations, they suddenly emerged holding the golden prize, declaring themselves to be at odds with political views they had previously espoused.