David Lammy risked the fury of the Labour left as he praised Margaret Thatcher.
The shadow foreign secretary said the former Conservative Prime Minister was a “visionary leader”.
He told the Politico Power Play podcast: “Margaret Thatcher was a visionary leader for the UK; no doubt about it – that’s absolutely clear.”
The Labour frontbencher was defending shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s comparison with Baroness Thatcher in a key speech yesterday.
Ms Reeves prompted a backlash from those on the Labour left for saying Britain stands at an “inflection point” similar to that in the late 1970s.
But Mr Lammy said Ms Reeves’s reference to Baroness Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, was “apposite”.
He said: “If you look back to the end of the 1970s. Britain on its knees, sick man of Europe. We weren’t even able to bury our dead and sort out our rubbish.
“I’m afraid we were in a mess. And it did need big economics to get us out of that mess.”
He added: “Now you can take issue with Mrs Thatcher’s prescription, but she had a big manifesto for change and set about a course that lasted for over two decades.”
Ms Reeves’s speech to the Mais Lecture has been criticised by trade unions and Corbynista campaign group Momentum.
The shadow chancellor said: “When we speak of a decade of national renewal, that is what we mean. As we did at the end of the 1970s, we stand at an inflection point.
“And as in earlier decades, the solution lies in wide-ranging supply-side reform to drive investment, remove the blockages constraining our productive capacity, and fashion a new economic settlement drawing on evolutions in economic thought.”
But she added that “unlike the 1980s, growth in the years to come must be broad-based, inclusive, and resilient”.
