On 19 March 2024, Rachel Reeves, Labour's shadow chancellor, gave the Mais Lecture at the Bayes business school. Some reports said Reeves was going to praise the policies of Margaret Thatcher. In fact she didn't. Reeves said of Thatcher’s policies “The outcome was an unprecedented surge in inequality between places and people which endures today [and] the decline or disappearance of whole industries, leaving enduring social and economic costs and hollowing out our industrial strength.”