Thatcher, Sunak and the politics of the supermarket
The story of British politics told through the aisles
There is no museum to Margaret Thatcher. There is no need for one, given the Sainsbury’s supermarket on the high street in Finchley, her former constituency. She opened it on March 16th 1987, inspecting the sausages, zapping cans at the till and delivering a sermon to its employees. “The market economy isn’t some theory—it is, in fact, men and women being able to spend their own earnings in the place of their choice, in shops like these.”
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “This sceptred aisle”
From the March 11th 2023 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the edition
Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are forging a tight link
As Donald Trump threatens to leave Europe on its own
Britain’s government may be about to waste its best chance of success
A bill to unblock house building and boost growth looks far too timid
Paying teenagers to go to school was a bad idea
At least in Britain
Anybody in Britain can call themselves a therapist
That opens the door to abuse
Britain’s capital markets are waging a war on paper
Calls are growing to modernise the country’s shareholding system