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On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with observations about the ongoing government shutdown, how it could be a strategic mistake for Republicans, and why this political standoff is best understood as a “quasi-election” about the rule of law itself.

Then Frum is joined by Lord Charles Moore, the authorized biographer of Margaret Thatcher, to mark the centenary of her birth. Together, they look back on Thatcher’s transformation of Britain, from nationalized stagnation to a revitalized free-market democracy, and her alliance with Ronald Reagan, which helped bring the Cold War to a close. Moore explains how Thatcher’s belief in “law-based liberty” and her defense of national sovereignty set her apart from both libertarians and nationalists, and why her example of disciplined, principled leadership feels more and more distant in the politics of today.

In the book segment, Frum discusses Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, and reflects on exile, despair, and why holding on to hope, rather than despair, matters when history suddenly turns dark.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

David Frum: ​​ Hello and welcome back to The David Frum Show. I’m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic. My guest this week will be Charles Moore, the authorized biographer of Margaret Thatcher, and we’ll be discussing the life of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in this, her 100th-anniversary birthday month. At the end of the conversation, in the final segment of the show, I’ll discuss the book The World of Yesterday by the Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig.

Before beginning either of these segments, however, I want to open with some thoughts about events in Washington at the moment: the government shutdown that began on the 1st of October. I record this episode on the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving, American Columbus Day—speaking to you from, in fact, Ontario, Canada—and the government is shut down as I record. It looks very unlikely that the United States government can possibly reopen before the 14th of October, and the shutdown may extend longer than that.

Now, a shutdown is a very strange thing in American government because the government is sort of shut down and sort of not. Interest on the debt continues to be paid, Social Security checks continue to be issued, and many essential functions of government continue. As you’ve all noticed, the ICE guys have not stopped throwing people into the back of trucks, and the military continues to do its operations. All of these essential services continue to be performed, even if the people who perform them continue not to be paid, and even if you think some of those services may be a little less essential than others. But many aspects of the government do shut down and many essential workers sort of self-shut down. If you’ve tried to fly by air in this month of October, you’ve noticed a lot of delays. And that’s because air-traffic controllers are regarded as essential workers, but since they’re not paid, some of them call in sick and do other things: They take the day off. They drive Uber. They have ends to meet, the same as everybody else.

Government shutdowns are a recurring feature of the United States government. There was a government shutdown that lasted 34 days over Christmas in 2018, 2019. There was a government shutdown that lasted 16 days in 2013. There was a government shutdown that lasted 21 days in 1995, ’96. But the most recent government shutdowns—’95, ’96; 2013; and 2018, ’19—were all started by Republicans and were all lost by Republicans. And from that experience, the Republicans of today drew a lesson that is guiding the politics of the shutdown in 2025.

Republicans concluded: We started those three prior shutdowns; we lost them. Therefore, whoever starts the shutdown will be the side that loses. And if we can maneuver the Democrats into being the side that shuts down the government, they must lose. And indeed, in 2025, it was the Democrats who failed to deliver the necessary votes to get over the hump of 60 votes in the Senate that would’ve kept the government open, so the Republican talking point that the Democrats did it is sort of true. But they made a miscalculation in understanding the pattern. It may be that the reason that Republicans lost the past three shutdowns—’95, 2013, and 2018, ’19—was that they initiated it, but as we see this shutdown unfold and the Democrats seem not to be losing, maybe what matters more is not who did it, but why.

In 1995, the Newt Gingrich Republicans shut down the United States government to try to force cuts in Medicare on the Bill Clinton administration. In 2013, the new Tea Party Republican majority in the House tried to shut down the government to force the Obama administration to roll back a lot of its subsidies to health-care plans under the Affordable Care Act. So in both those first two cases, the shutdown was about the Republicans trying to cut funds to health-care spending, the Democrats were resisting, and the Republicans initiated the shutdown and then lost. In 2018, 2019, the Republicans initiated the shutdown to try to force Democrats to give them more money for President Trump’s border wall, and they didn’t get it; they lost that fight too. And they lost the fight because of the why: that Americans did not agree with Donald Trump that it was urgent to spend billions upon billions of dollars to build a wall across the United States border.

In this present shutdown fight, the Democrats may have initiated it, but unlike the Republicans in ’95 and 2013, they initiated it to defend health-care subsidies, not to take them away. And that may turn out to be the thing that matters—not the who, but the why. We’ll see the result.

But I wanna think a little bit about the strangeness of this particular battle. Now, Donald Trump is trying to force the Democrats’ hand by using the shutdown as an opportunity to inflict pain on Democratic constituencies: stopping the flow of programs that benefit blue states, construction and other kinds of programs like that, and furloughing and then firing large numbers of government workers who are regarded as Democratic constituencies. Much of the government, by the way, is staffed by people who probably vote Republican. Federal prisons, the guards there probably are Republican leaners. ICE seems to be Donald Trump’s personal militia, so they, presumably, are voting for him. And the military votes in probably the way, more or less, the way the rest of America votes: It’s, I’m sure, quite split down the middle. But many of the civilian functions are thought to be, or at least Donald Trump thinks them to be, more Democrat than Republican. And if you can fire the workers at the CDC, that’s a pain point for Democrats. That’s a pain point for Democratic blue states, Maryland and Virginia. And by imposing pain, he can force the conclusion of the agreement on his terms.

I mentioned at the start, or I think I mentioned at the start, that this is a uniquely American event. Government shutdowns don’t happen in other countries. And the reason they don’t is because most countries are parliamentary systems. The parliament votes the supply, the money, and the executive spends the supply. If the executive can’t get a vote in parliament to authorize the supply, then the executive falls; that’s a loss of confidence. And the prime minister or the chancellor loses power, and there’s an election—or a shuffle of coalitions, at least.

Now, the United States cannot have these kinds of elections at other than the statutory times, but in a way, what is going on in a government shutdown is exactly the kind of event that would, in another country, force an election—in a way, the legislature saying, The executive has lost our confidence. We won’t vote supply, and we are withholding supply until the executive changes its ways. What it is, it’s a kind of artificial election; it’s an election in miniature. And as Democrats think about what their strategy is, thinking of this shutdown as something that would be an election if it were happening in Canada or Germany or Britain is a way for them to think about it.

Because the reason they’re withholding supply from the Trump administration is not just because of an argument about how generous health-care subsidies should be. That’s the ground the Democrats picked, but that’s not what this fight is really about. This fight is about the rule of law because the background to it is: Any deal you strike with the Trump administration on spending, the Trump administration has said, We’re not bound by it. We declare our intent, we assert our right to refuse to spend funds that Congress has appropriated. So even if there were a deal where Congress said today, Here’s the funding deal, and the Trump administration said, Right, that’s the funding deal, the Trump administration could then walk out the door into the next room and say, That deal we agreed to five minutes ago? We’re repudiating it. We’re holding things back.

And meanwhile, Democrats are also saying, Why would the parliament, the Congress, vote supply to an executive that is breaking the law in all kinds of other ways?