Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher's term as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom began on 4 May 1979 when she accepted an invitation of Queen Elizabeth II to form a government, and ended on 28 November 1990 upon her resignation. She was elected to the position in 1979, having led the Conservative Party since 1975, and won landslide re-elections in 1983 and 1987. She gained intense media attention as Britain's first female prime minister, and was the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. Her premiership ended when she withdrew from the 1990 Conservative leadership election. While serving as prime minister, Thatcher also served as the First Lord of the Treasury, the Minister for the Civil Service and the Leader of the Conservative Party. In domestic policy, Thatcher implemented sweeping reforms concerning the affairs of the economy, eventually including the privatisation of most nationalised industries, as well as weakening of trade unions. She emphasised reducing the government's role and letting the marketplace decide in terms of the neoliberal ideas pioneered by Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, promoted by her mentor Keith Joseph, and promulgated by the media as Thatcherism. In foreign policy, Thatcher decisively defeated Argentina in the Falklands War in 1982. In longer-range terms she worked with Ronald Reagan to wage a war against communism during the Cold War. However, she also promoted collaboration with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in ending the Cold War. In her first years she had a deeply divided cabinet. As the leader of the "dry" faction she purged most of the One Nation "wet" Conservatives and took full control. By the late 1980s, however, she had alienated several senior members of her Cabinet with her opposition to greater economic integration into the European Economic Community, which she argued would lead to a federalist Europe and surrender Britain's ability to self govern. She also alienated many Conservative voters and parliamentarians with the imposition of a local poll tax.