The Premiership of Margaret Thatcher began on 4 May 1979, with a mandate to reverse the UK's economic decline and to reduce the role of the state in the economy. Margaret Thatcher was incensed by one contemporary view within the Civil Service, that its job was to manage the UK's decline from the days of Empire, and she wanted the country to assert a higher level of influence and leadership in international affairs. She was a philosophic soul-mate of Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 in the United States, and to a lesser extent Brian Mulroney, who was elected in 1984 in Canada. Free market conservatism now became the new dominant political philosophy in many western nations, dubbed neoliberalism. Indeed after years of socialist political dominance, Thatcher would go on to radically transform Britain more so than any leader of Britain since Clement Attlee, rejuvenating a stagnant world power but socially dividing much of the population.