Click to listen highlighted text! Powered By GSpeech

Home » Uncategorized » At least we now know that Thatcherism was built on rocky foundations

At least we now know that Thatcherism was built on rocky foundations



22 years ago, towards the dying days of Margaret Thatcher’s government in the eighties, I decided that I would never vote Conservatives for the rest of life. 22 years later, I have stuck to this. I remember when Maggie boasted that she had built the UK on ‘firm foundations’. The rest of Europe, apart from us, have now visibly rejected another potent ideology, austerity – simples, austerity failed. I believe we should now reject Thatcherism too as a failed ideology.

 

The two years which have just gone have seen a remarkable realisation by the general public of the marketisation principles espoused by the Conservatives and New Labour. New Labour’s ultimate sin is to pursue the deterioration in social inequality and greater degree of commodification of public sector services. This rejection has taken the form of the pendulum swinging away from Thatcher at last, with Cameron and Clegg having done quite long-lasting damage to the Thatcher brand. Members of the general public who comment that, ‘even Thatcher didn’t go as far as this’, are in fact correct in identifying that the Cameron government has tried to implement the worst aspects of the Thatcher administration, but done it completely incompetently. This Coalition is not just woefully incompetent in strategy, but also in operations and tactics, magnificently demonstrated by Osborne’s Budget this year.

 

When William Hague said to George Osborne, looking lovingly at No. 10, ‘We’re desperately close you know’, both Hague and Osborne knew that they had done so on a tissue of lies, which they hoped to maintain until the Office for National Statistics called time on their drinking of misinformation. The story to tell was Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling had been reckless with the public finances. Two facts spoke out clearly against this. Firstly, the IMF also showed that, when it came to government debt, Britain had the lowest levels of all G7 states, and close to average levels of the countries in the G20. Secondly, the deficit which Labour ‘ran up’ in 2008 was due to bailing out the banks saving UK of an even bigger economic crisis which happened at that time. This was all during a period where Labour had maintained public spending on the infrastructure, leading to record levels of satisfaction in the NHS. When Peter Kellner was asked why this had not benefited Labour in terms of a ‘poll leader’ at the meeting of ‘Southern Discomfort’ at a meeting of the Fabian Society in 2010, Kellner offered that there was an aspect of ‘IMBYism’ in that beneficiaries of Labour’s spend on the NHS with a good NHS considered themselves ‘some of the lucky ones’.

 

It was extremely difficult for Labour to win in 2010 at the tail end of 13 years in power. Gordon Brown’s encounter with Gillian Duffy exposed the fault lines in the immigration and insecurity debate. Ed Miliband has succinctly summarised this perfectly, by saying that not everyone who raises the topic of immigration is a bigot. Labour had become repulsive to many, because of epitomising an overzealous State which believed in overdetention without charge. The public blamed Labour for the state of the economy, but in May 2010, the country was – albeit weakly – emerging from recession. We are now back in recession, as a direct measure of policies such as  scrapping of ‘Building schools for the future’ and throttling consumer demand through the VAT hike).

 

Cameron doesn’t do ‘organic’. Like the control management systems of corporates, there is a ‘command-and-conquer’ approach of the NHS Commissioning Board and the Big Society (the biggest fraud of them all, as it was all a cover for venture philanthropism through the Big Society Bank). Nick Clegg’s PBB called ‘Broken Promises’ now has a definite irony about it. Many in Labour resent the Liberal Democrats for denying Labour a majority, but Labour should not be oblivious to the faults of the Brown/Blair regime either. The Liberal Democrats have made it possible for the controversial legal aid cuts, unpopular welfare benefits changes (victimising the disabled) and privatisation of the NHS to reach the statute books. The vast majority of observers of social welfare will not vote for the Liberal Democrats in 2015 for this very reason. Even the demonisation of the Unions backfired spectacularly with Francis Maude tried to incite political hatred towards the petrol workers who never went on strike anyway. Cameron has perfected, however, in copying a trait of Thatcher – alienating sectors of society one-by-one such that you ultimately become unelectable. Luckily for us, we have extremely sharp bloggers with projects such as Sunny’s “Five Million Votes”, present company excluded, and brilliant tweeting activists (such as Rosie’s recent #twitterviews initiative).

 

The contempt for the Coalition has become visceral, and it’s entirely mutual. The reason that the ‘benefit scroungers’ campaign by the Tories, whilst being popular, is ideologically difficult is that allegations abound of rampant tax avoidance by corporates of the order of millions. Private entities, facing serious serious allegations, include A4e, G4S and Barclays, and this mistrust of corporate philosophy has even spread to resentment of McDonalds and Coca Cola sponsoring the Olympics (a criticism even voiced by British doctors in view of ballooning obesity in the UK). Many industries in Britain function as oligopolies, which means that they can easily put profit ahead the needs of the stakeholders including customers and suppliers. This has been seen with the high prices charged by utility companies, and the corporate bullying by corporate supermarkets of farmers in the provision of milk. Whilst the propaganda still exists of ‘unions crippling the country’ from the 1970s, the vast majority of people in this country would prefer workers in the economy to have powerful democratic representation, than not. The idea that companies actually exploit workers to make a profit has taken afoot, such as through the disaster of Workfare. The actual power of shareholder activism in international corporates has been shown to be embarrassingly weak, thus far. The country is dangerous unbalanced, another legacy of the Thatcher administration though exacerbated under Labour.

 

Dennis Skinner once referred to George Osborne as a man  ‘educated beyond his intelligence’. Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, George Osborne, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander have now become the people you would least likely want to go down the pub for a drink with. Ed Miliband’s personal ratings are now quite good, Ed Balls is now trusted on the economy more than George Osborne (and reasonably so as he predictedly perfectly why Osborne’s Plan A would fail). With slogans by David Cameron echoing in the ears of Labour members like ‘Time for a change’ and ‘We can’t go on like this’, whilst we may not have our version of the Poll Tax Revolt or the Michael Portillo moment, the public has finally begun to understand why the foundations of Thatcherism led to a horrific legacy. One hopes that this will be replaced by an ethical socialism, and that the Olympic legacy is better.

  • A A A
  • Click to listen highlighted text! Powered By GSpeech