“Oh, you’re embarrassing her now,” Jenrick said as he was pressed on the name.
“It is Margaret Thatcher … It’s Thatcher. She was born the year that Margaret Thatcher died.”
Jenrick said he’d picked the name because he respects “strong women.”
“I thought it was a good way of reminding her of a good prime minister,” he added.
It’s unlikely to do Jenrick, the bookmakers’ favorite to lead the Conservative Party after a hefty election defeat, much harm.
A 2021 poll found that the free-market Thatcher, who led the Tories to three successive election wins and reshaped the British state during the 1980s, ranks behind only Winston Churchill in Brits’ estimations of who was best in the top job.