Labour leader Ed Miliband will say Britain needs a new economic settlement that unites the country.
Mr Miliband’s speech at the Scottish Labour Party conference in Inverness will claim Lady Thatcher came to power when it was clear the old ways did not work any more and people were looking for a change of direction.
He will compare that time to today, and say people are asking if the country can again shift direction away from some of the orthodoxies of the 1980s.
Mr Miliband will also warn that both the Conservative Party and the SNP only offer “more of the same old divisive solutions”.
“You know the similarities between what was happening in the 1980s and what is happening today under a Conservative-led government,” he will say.
“But the parallels don’t end there. They also lie in what enabled the Tory government to come to power back then and circumstances now.
“Back in the 1970s, it was clear the country needed a new way of doing things a new settlement and so too today.
“The old way of running our economy just doesn’t work any more deregulation, the dominance of finance over industry, allowing large private sector vested interests to flourish, government getting out of the way in the economy, the promise that the majority would always do well from an in-it-for-yourself, laissez faire, deregulated economy just isn’t working for most working people.”
Mr Miliband will also use his speech to draw comparisons between the “divisiveness of the Tories and the narrow nationalism of the SNP”.
He will say: “What did (Alex Salmond) say about Lady Thatcher’s legacy? That she helped to deliver a Scottish Parliament.
“Well I’ve got a message for him. Margaret Thatcher didn’t make the case for a Scottish Parliament. The Labour Party and the people of Scotland did.
“And Margaret Thatcher didn’t deliver a Scottish Parliament, a Labour Government working with the people of Scotland did.”
A new Labour local election broadcast dubbed Made by the Many will be launched today, featuring people who are “not the most powerful or the wealthiest, but (who) are the people who keep our country running”.