The comments made by Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister, on 8 July 2025.
Norman Tebbit was a hero of modern Conservatism. In the early 1980s he liberated the British workforce from the socialist tyranny of the closed shop. He tamed the union bosses, and in so doing he helped pave the way for this country’s revival in the 1980s and 1990s.
At a time when the Labour government is now disastrously reversing those crucial reforms we need to remember what he did and why. In his single most famous phrase he once said that in the 1930s his unemployed father had got on his bike and looked for work. That wasn’t a heartless thing to say – as the Labour Party claimed. It was because he believed in thrift and energy and self-reliance. It was because he rejected a culture of easy entitlement.
We mourn the passing of a great patriot, a great Conservative – and today more than ever we need to restore the values of Norman Tebbit to our politics.