Tom Richmond: In 1983, Mrs Thatcher thought she’d had her chips... in 2013, Cameron needs her poll recipe

Though Labour retained many of its Yorkshire heartlands, seats like Dewsbury fell to Thatcher’s Tories for the first time in 64 years while the party also won in constituencies like Batley and Spen, Bradford North, Halifax and York – areas that have been Conservative-free zones in more recent times. The Conservatives also retained a significant presence in Leeds and Sheffield.

Why does this matter? If David Cameron is to secure an outright majority at the 2015 election, he is going to have to win back many of those pivotal Yorkshire constituencies that continued to elude his party three years ago because voters in marginal seats were not convinced by the Tory message, in spite of Gordon Brown almost bankrupting Britain.

It is a challenge made even more formidable by the lingering fallout from the spending cuts which the Prime Minister has had to implement; Ukip’s rise to prominence over the EU referendum and his crass insensitivity in allowing himself to be photographed soaking up the sun in Ibiza in the days after terrorists killed Drummer Lee Rigby near Woolwich Barracks.

It was the type of PR gaffe which Mrs Thatcher rarely made because she preferred the quiet seclusion of the Chequers country retreat that has been shunned by her publicity-seeking successors.

Yet, while Mr Cameron’s aides have let it be known that the Tory leader’s holiday reading includes Charles Moore’s official biography of Britain’s first female premier, it may have been more pertinent to appraise him of the chapter on the 1983 election in The Downing Street Years – Thatcher’s own memoir.

Though the feelgood factor following the Falklands conflict enhanced her reputation, it was not a primary consideration when she set up the first of 11 policy groups five days after Port Stanley’s liberation to prepare themes for a prospective election manifesto.

Thatcher wrote that they had two purposes. She wanted to involve her whole party and she wanted fresh ideas, though she conceded later that neither objective was met in full. Nevertheless both principles are relevant to Cameron today – there is a disconnect between his inner circle and those grass roots members recently likened to “swivel-eyed loons”, while “more of the same” is not an enticing proposition from either a policy or economic perspective.

Given the extent to which Cameron – like Tony Blair – has become obsessed with gimmickry and ideas drawn up on the back of the proverbial envelope, Thatcher’s memoirs contain this nugget: “Really bold proposals in any manifesto can only be developed over a considerable period of time. Relying on bright ideas thought out at the last moment risks a manifesto that would be incoherent and impossible to carry out.”

As such, Margaret Thatcher went to the country after setting out three broad policy themes – an acceleration of the privatisation of state-owned industries as part of an aspiration agenda; the reform of trade union laws to make it easier to spread prosperity to all through private enterprise and the abolition of metropolitan county councils, such as those bodies that served South and West Yorkshire, in order to keep local government finances in check.

She spoke of a “great chain of people” who are “linked by a common belief in freedom, and Britain’s greatness. All are aware of their own responsibility to contribute to both”. Contrast this with 2013 and a welfare state that has become entrenched because of a declining work ethic – and leaders, like David Cameron, paying lip service to laudable themes like ‘localism’ and ‘the big society’ because they’re preoccupied with the next set of opinion polls.

Mrs Thatcher was also helped by Labour leader Michael Foot producing a manifesto that was dubbed “the longest suicide note” in political history. Yet he still had to beaten – a point that Cameron needs to take on board as Ed Miliband fails to come to terms with the economic consequences of Labour’s 13 years in office under Blair and Brown.

That said, she had a very clear idea of Britain’s future prospects – as evidenced by her campaign visit to Yorkshire on May 26, 1983. She politely describes her visit to Harry Ramsden’s fish and chip restaurant at Guiseley as a “highlight” because of a desire not to offend, but the reality, noted Mrs T, was a “quite chaotic” occasion with “cameramen crashing around the startled diners”.

An early example of the stage-managed photo opportunity that has come to define British elections, this was still an era, thankfully, when great significance was attached to heavyweight policy speeches – and Thatcher did not disappoint that evening in Harrogate when she sought to broaden the Tory support base to blue collar workers, and at Labour’s expense. Her argument was this: “The more numerous and dissatisfied Labour supporters were in the rising working and lower middle class – the same group that in America Ronald Reagan was winning over and who were known as ‘Reagan Democrats’. they were benefiting from the opportunities we had made available, especially the sale of council houses; more important, they shared our values, including a strong belief in family life and an intense patriotism.”

Irrespective of one’s view of Margaret Thatcher’s overall legacy, these words have as much relevance today as they did three decades ago when they were first spoken in Harrogate’s Royal Hall.

Why? First, Mrs Thatcher’s vision and force of personality meant that she engaged with the country – even those who loathed her housewife politics. Second, she led from the front, in contrast to Cameron who has his friend and menacing rival Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, now scheming in the wings. And, third, the people she reached out to in 1983 to return a Tory government are the very same aspirational people now offended by Cameron’s arrogant advisers.

All these are lessons that David Cameron needs to learn before it is too late – assuming, of course, that he has the humility and wisdom to do so. In short, he should ditch his out-of-touch Eton and Notting Hill policy cliques and ask voters in a key barometer seat – Batley and Spen for example – to help shape his manifesto.

For, unless his party can overturn Labour’s 4,406-vote majority by retaining every supporter from 2010 and then winning over at least 2,204 new electors, he will go down in history as an under-achieving one-term premier who was 
so poor that he enabled Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to return to power.

It is a depressing prospect and one 
that would never have happened on Margaret Thatcher’s watch.