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Conservative veteran Sir Liam Fox says Britain needs to reclaim the spirit of Margaret Thatcher. He hit back after Prime Minister Andy Burnham blamed Margaret Thatcher’s reforms in the 1980s for the country’s problems today. And Sir Liam, a former Defence Secretary, said the modern Tories could also learn lessons from Lady Thatcher’s pioneering government.

Mr Burnham has repeatedly claimed that decisions made in the Thatcher era have damaged the UK to this day. Last week he told Parliament: “From the 1980s, this country took a series of wrong turns.” But Sir Liam told the Express that Lady Thatcher attracted “younger people who wanted a break with what was broken Britain.”

He said: “Conservatives at that time offered genuine hope and a change in a way that no other party did. It’s a position they need to return to today.”

Sir Liam said: “The politicians we have today, unlike politicians like Margaret Thatcher, are unwilling to endure unpopularity for any length of time. They see politics as a bit of an episode of X Factor, where you’ve got to be popular.

“And I remember Mrs Thatcher used to say that unpopular policies can lead to popular outcomes, but only if you see them through.”

She also advised: “If it’s popularity you want, my dear, try light entertainment. Politics is the wrong career.”

Sir Liam is worried about the threat from Russia. He said the country “had a brief chance to become a democracy” but has “become a thugocracy, a criminal state run by gangsters”.

He added: “There still remains a world out there, a world that Mrs Thatcher once described as being as a perpetual battle between good and evil, right and wrong, democracy and autocracy, freedom and repression. And those battles will go on forever.”

But he also praised current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. “I think she has displayed a steadfastness and intellectual strength and moral courage in all the things that she’s done.

“And she showed that it’s still possible to be consistent as a politician and popular.”