Sir John Redwood is a former MP for Wokingham and a former Secretary of State for Wales.

Fifty years ago, Margaret Thatcher became Conservative leader. Today’s politicians are still arguing about her legacy. Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, according to some briefings, want some of the steely prudence to rub off on them, whilst determinedly backing policies that do the opposite.

Meanwhile the new Conservative front bench and some Conservative think tanks are rediscovering Sir Keith Joseph, her trailblazer and ideas man in Opposition. There is talk of a Joseph-style policy and philosophy rethink over the next couple of years as the party does the groundwork to offer itself as the next government in 2028-9. So, what can we learn from the 1970s?

The 1970s were dreadful years for the UK, with a Labour government from February 1974 that spent and borrowed too much, allowed inflation to roar, and ended up having to borrow ignominiously from the IMF. Meanwhile the Conservative Party had to recover from its own economic failings when it led the government in 1970-74.

Ted Heath had soon dumped his free market-oriented, election-winning manifesto as inflation, the three-day week, and the bruising miners strike in 1973-4 overwhelmed him. Calling an early election in the February, he plunged to defeat, to the surprise of Conservative  leaders. It was a wild introduction to British politics for me as a young man.

At 21 I got myself elected as a fellow of All Souls College Oxford and met Sir Keith as he was a Distinguished fellow and a Cabinet Minister. A few months later I won the election in Witney to sit on the County Council as a Conservative, in a difficult year and a highly marginal seat.

Joseph wanted to talk to me at College about the mood of my constituents and the state we were in. I presumed to tell him I thought the government’s economic policy was a disaster, trying to use socialist-style prices and incomes policies to dampen an inflation their irresponsible banking and monetary policy had created. It was obvious many working people were being squeezed by the controls and were very unhappy with falling living standards; I had backed the Manifesto policies and wanted them to carry them through.

When there was talk of an early election on the issue of the miners’ strike I advised they would lose. It seemed to me the miners had a good claim to a decent pay rise as inflation was running high and the price of coal had risen sharply. Sir Keith indulged my insubordination but disagreed strongly. He and the PM were sure they would win a big victory in the early election. They ran it on the question of ‘Who governs the country?’; given the big disruption of the strike, the public shouted back “Not you!”.

After the second election defeat and the election of Thatcher as the new leader, Joseph was charming and, recalling my previous forecasts, asked me to advise himself and his Policy Committee on economic matters and public spending. (He was on his own journey back to free enterprise thinking after supporting the battery of controls they introduced to try to manage the inflation and secondary banking crash.)

He set up a number of review  groups including the economic and budget one I was on. We did detailed work on the nation’s spending and taxes, aware that a split Labour government without a majority could fall at any time and the Conservatives might need detailed plans to take over in a hurry.

Margaret saw all our papers and sent her views via Sir Keith. She was understandably very worried about the detail of spending cuts in the work we were doing, so she insisted on pulping all papers after a meeting. The party made clear in general terms there would need to be reductions in spending to avoid more IMF disasters but did not want to get into a line by line argument before the election.

I proposed a major privatisation programme. This would take the money for nationalised capital expenditure programmes off the state budget, and would end automatic payment of losses by taxpayers. I also thought it would lead to substantial improvements in the performance of leading industries, so generating more corporation tax revenue.

Sir Keith and colleagues were not ready to make the case for large privatisations of telecoms and energy, though they were ready for the sale of some of the smaller industrial, defence, and communications businesses.

He asked me to chair a committee at the Centre for Policy Studies to work up proposals for privatisation, which I and the Committee did on a case-by-case basis. I provided those interested with a large spreadsheet listing all the main state trading concerns with their recent profits and losses, cash calls on the state, and options for asset sales, private capital raising, or sale of the whole.

This helped the writers of the manifesto to see what they could do immediately. In the first parliament they sold BP, British Aerospace, Cable and Wireless, British Sugar, National Freight, and Amersham (they decided to wait out a whole Parliament before adopting the advice on the larger industries). The preparation was important, as the civil service was not going to generate these sort of ideas.

The success of the policy groups under Margaret and Sir Keith rested on close collaboration between shadow ministers, external advisers, and think tanks, especially the CPS. We helped them make a philosophical case, so there would be understandable principles and objectives once in government.

We did plenty of detailed work on what legislation and executive actions would be  needed once in office; Joseph set out the direction of travel in important and sometimes provocative speeches; and we identified issues and policies that could be used as examples of what we would do in the debates before election. Margaret, meanwhile, read a lot, and prepared herself for what she understood was going to be a big battle to get the establishment to implement what needed to be done.

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