There are many rituals surrounding the placement of a new Japanese Emperor on the Chrysanthemum Throne. Perhaps the most peculiar is the would-be emperor’s encounter with aquasi-sacred, 1300-year-old bronze mirror, the Yata no Kagami. This object, which embodies ‘wisdom’, is so enigmatic the aspirant emperor isn’t even allowed to see it; instead, functionaries are sent to assure the mirror of the new emperor’s fidelity. Some historians believe the mirror no longer exists, and was lost in a fire in Honshu’s Ise Shrine, 980 years ago.

Thus it is with Labour leaders and Margaret Thatcher. Ever since the departure of the Iron Lady, aspiring or actual Labour prime ministers have made obeisance to the strange, overpowering ghost of British politics, years after her retirement and death, when her continued omnipresence is therefore a kind of Zen mystery.

Tony Blair, as ever, got in his fealty precociously early. As a young Labour frontbencher, he expressed his high regard for her election winning clarity, and her stance as ‘a moderniser against outdated collectivism’. As he said: ‘she goes right to the heart.’

Gordon Brown was more begrudging. Nonetheless, when he became PM in 2007 he described her as a ‘conviction politician’ who ‘saw the need for change’; he also invited her for tea at Number 10. Likewise, in 2014, then leader of the opposition Ed Miliband signalled his admiration for Baroness Thatcher’s ‘sense of purpose’, which enabled her to make crucial ‘public service reforms’. And now, of course, we have Sir Keir Starmer, who wrote and spoke, yesterday, of his respect for her ‘driving mission’ and his awe at the way ‘she sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism’.

Thatcher shakes hands with Tony Blair in 2007 (Credit: Getty Images)

Indeed, the one Labour leader who has not performed this ritualised, kowtowing abasement before the mirror of Maggie’s soul is Jeremy Corbyn. And where is he now? Virtually thrown out of the party in disgrace, after delivering Labour’s worst defeat in eight decades. You can see, therefore, why superstitious Labour leaders feel a need to genuflect before the fearsome totem of La Thatch.

All of which would be funny, yet parochial, if this was merely a British phenomenon. But it isn’t. I first personally realised that Mrs Thatcher was a planet-wide icon in Egypt in the late 1980s. Barely out of my teens, I climbed in a taxi in Cairo, discovered the driver was garrulous and good at English – then I heard a paean of praise for Margaret Thatcher.

‘Great woman!’ the driver kept saying, slapping his steering wheel with unsettling enthusiasm, ‘Great woman! She is strong leader, very good for England!’ Somehow the mythos of the Iron Lady was already reaching the patriarchal backstreets of Egypt.

Since then – it seems to me – the power of her legend has only grown. As with the Japanese imperial regalia, her putative non-existence has not reduced her potency. It may even be adding to it.

Vladimir Putin has described Thatcher as a ‘brilliant political figure’

She is, of course, extremely popular on the contemporary right. Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD, the alt.right party surging up the polls in Germany, regularly declares Thatcher to be her ‘role model’. Geert Wilders, leader of Holland’s most popular party, the PVV, has used very similar but even more enthusiastic words, claiming Thatcher is his ‘greatest political role model’.

Another right-wing populist, Donald Trump, is said to see Margaret Thatcher as his true political inspiration (according to Trump’s guru Steve Bannon). Indeed, profound respect for Thatcher is almost obligatory in the Republican Party; the GOP candidate most likely to replace Trump (should he stumble) is Nikki Haley: she is an avowed fan of Thatcher, and directly quoted Britain’s first female PM in a Republican debate a few weeks back (‘if you want something done: ask a woman’). Meanwhile, down in Argentina, yes Argentina, their new leader, Javier Milei recently said, of the Falklands victor: ‘she is one of the greatest leaders in the history of humanity’.

Nor is this reverence restricted to right-wing westerners or Latin American mavericks. When Thatcher died in 2013, Barack Obama claimed the ‘world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty’. At the same time, the EU’s Jose Barroso described her as ‘a great stateswoman’, Mikhail Gorbachev honoured her as a ‘great politician’, Israel’s Shimon Peres called her ‘exceptional’, Irish PM Enda Kenny hailed as ‘a formidable political leader’, and ex Polish president Lech Walesa called her simply a ‘great person’.

Most piquantly, Vladimir Putin has described Thatcher as a ‘brilliant political figure’, this despite Thatcher – rather presciently – saying in 2000 that she looked in Putin’s eyes and ‘could not find a trace of humanity’.

One of my favourite examples of Thatcherphilia comes from an obscure socialist British academic named Michel Brown. He was working in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, and faced constant toasts in praise of the Blessed Margaret. Eventually he objected, and – as he writes – ‘their reaction [to my objections] was usually utter incomprehension and bafflement. “Who doesn’t like Thatcher?”‘

Another, better known example is Yanis Varoufakis, the firebrand far-left Greek ex-finance minister. He actually spent half his early life opposing Thatcher’s UK reforms, when he studied and worked in Britain. He went to multiple marches, shouting ‘Maggie Maggie, Maggie, Out Out Out’. By 2016, at the Hay Festival, he admitted he had come to admire much about her character.

It is quite a global legacy. Only Churchill really compares in modern British politics, and arguably even Churchill – with his complex luggage of imperialism – does not get the unstinting praise afforded to Mrs T.

What, therefore, is going on? It seems to me multiple things are at work. For any female politician, Thatcher is an obvious role model. For any democratic leader – an Obama or a Blair – she is an example of gritty determination that wins elections. For any nationalist – a Putin or a Pinochet – she is an inspiring patriot (and war winner). For any leader with a tough economic job – like Starmer, or Milei – she is an example of how you can turn a country around against the odds, given sufficient conviction.

There is also, of course, the possibility that she now occupies a more religious space in our minds: genuinely closer to the Yata no Kagami. In that respect, Margaret Thatcher is akin to a modern-day King Arthur. She is not dead, she merely sleeps, under the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, awaiting the moment when she must return: Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus. At some point, at the very nadir of British history, when we are at maximum peril, the sharp midwinter light will strike her sleeping eyes, and she will blink awake, and return to lead us out of danger. In which case, looking about me, I do wish she’d get a move on.