Europe has had an interesting double-act on his hands during the economic crisis, though not a great deal of attention has been paid to it.
On the surface there are many similarities. Britain and Spain both have socialist prime ministers, both of whom were in office well before the crisis struck and both of whom present themselves as the best people for the job of handling the mess they did more than a little to inflame.
Unlike the Greek socialists, both Gordon Brown and José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero are in the difficult position of not being able to blame their predecessors for the almighty mess their countries are in. Zapatero has led his Socialist government 2004 while Brown has effectively held the reigns of the British economy since 1997. No escaping that one then.
But differences between the two become more apparent the further you dig. A feature in Monday's FT explained how "Spain was one of the few countries to run a budget surplus during the good times [and] entered the crisis with a low level of government debt - even now, at more than 55 per cent of GDP, it is 20 percentage points below the eurozone average"
The great difference between the two though comes, alas, from what they are actually willing to do about it. For Zapatero, the crisis gave a cold sobering slap in the face to a government that was riding on an artificially-induced post-euro euphoria. He now openly talks of 'austerity' and 'cuts', admitting that necessity commands he must do the unpopular but right thing.
What is Brown's answer? Mo' spending, mo' spending, mo' spending!
While his iberian counterpart talks frankly and honestly to the Spanish people about the hard times ahead, Brown prefers to hide his head up his own backside while criticising the leader of the opposition for saying the same thing. No wonder Ellie Gellard wanted to get rid.
This behaviour represents two things. Firstly, Labour's inability to engage with voters in an adult manner - why speak honestly when you can dangle debt-funded welfare treats infront of the electorate? Secondly, Brown's infamous inability to make tough decisions.
To his credit, Zapatero has excelled on this front, despite having a great deal to lose. The Spanish general elections are only two years away and, like Labour, the Spanish Socialists rely heavily on the trade unions, who are not going to be happy.
Undeterred, Zapatero told the FT (emphasis added): "We've just taken difficult decisions. Raising VAT, I can tell you that's not something that's been done to get people applauding us. You just have to look at the reaction of public opinion. From here to the elections our policy is going to have to be one of austerity and cost cutting ... There is no other way."
Can you imagine such talk from Brown? No, of course you can't. His claim to be a conviction politician has been exposed as the biggest single lie of his premiership (start as you mean to go on they say...)
Speaking of which, I couldn't help reading Zapatero's austerity plan without thinking of that other great conviction politician Brown facetiously compared himself to. Could this socialist be a Spanish Thatcher in the making?
The prospect is certainly an amusing one, but the evidence is compelling. Zapatero told the FT he plans to raise VAT, confront unions over labour reform, raise productivity, increase flexibility and emasculate the bureaucratic and spendthrift regional governments.
The idea of a Thatcherite socialist might sound something of a bad joke, but Zapatero's steadfast ability to look reality in the face and make tough fiscal decisions shows the only joke in the room to be Gordon Brown.
Another four years of Labour however would not be at all funny.
Showing posts with label gordon brown. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gordon brown. Show all posts
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”
It is often said that in politics, personal attacks surface when the party or politician in question has nothing new to bring to the table - that they have neither coherent policies nor any remaining means of defending their position. How true this is of Gordon Brown and his beleaguered Government. Today we saw, yet again, the now rather tedious spectacle of the Prime Minister evading questions by personally insulting the Leader of the Opposition, this time on the somewhat trivial subject of whether or not his election poster had been airbrushed.
Putting aside the fact that it is very difficult to find any photographic close-up these days that is not touched-up, or indeed of the desirability of such a course of action when your face is being enlarged to around a hundred times its size; the Prime Minister's statements have a double-edged irony. The first is that these trivial side-tracks are coming from a man who we have all seen dismiss attacks by David Cameron over the cohesion the Government by claiming that he is not concentrating on the 'big issues'. The second of course is that in doing so, and so visibly displaying the Government's complete poverty of direction and ideas, he is exposing himself to that insult which he so often levies at David Cameron - that he has no policies and is simply unfit to govern.
But where, I believe I am right in saying, the Prime Minister distinguishes himself from all previous Governments is that this poverty of ideas has led to the increasingly frequent spouting of clear, obvious and really rather large lies from the Cabinet benches in a frenzied attempt to cling to power. I believe I am also right in saying that this is a most disgraceful and rotten way to conduct Government, one that does however have a precedent with the Prime Minister's predecessor surrounding the motives for entry into the Iraq War.
One of the largest and, to my mind, most baffling of Labour lies being peddled at the moment concerns the Conservatives' plans to abolish inheritance tax below £1 million. I would very much like to write at length on this particular point, were it not so self-explanatory. Kicking off the Labour election campaign early in the year, Ed Balls claimed that "They [the Conservatives] want to have an inheritance tax cut which goes to millionaires" - an impossibility surely, given that the qualification for this particular tax cut is that one is not a millionaire. However, it appears that this claim is so radically departed from reality that it has caused a collective silence on the minds of those who hear it. The lie is simply so huge that nobody dares to challenge it.
Another example was the bizarre spectacle this afternoon of watching the Leader of the Opposition attack the massive budget deficit Labour had incurred between 1997 and 2007 - the largest in the industrial world he said, and the reason why Britain was so hard hit by the financial meltdown - only for the Prime Minister to reply by claiming the exact opposite. The United Kingdom entered the recession with the lowest public debt of any industrial nation he said, and that is why the Government has been able to help so many families and business get through the recession.
There is no doubt in my mind that this is very deliberate. Call me an insane conspiracy theorist if you wish, but the New Labour machine has been characterised by, if nothing else, its extensive use of spin to get away with saying that black is indeed white. It does not take a massive stretch of the imagination to construe that this army of spin doctors may use psychological methods of deception - such as those championed by Derren Brown - to mislead voters. Indeed, they would not be doing their job properly (one I do not believe ought to exist) if they did not.
One example of this deliberate misleading of the electorate is the bizarre contention that the recent expenses scandal warrants changes to the constitution of this country. There is simply no connection between the two. It is an out-and-out lie as much as that which attempted (and succeeded) in forming an imaginary link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Both the US Government then and the UK Government now have exploited a catastrophe to further an entirely separate end.
It was The Times that yesterday claimed "The fall-out from the expenses scandal has shaken Parliament and called into question the way the Commons works." Why? How has it done this? The expenses scandal was committed by individual MPs abusing a system of financial renumeration for their own ends. Those to blame are the MPs themselves and those members of the Fees Office who thought it pertinent to authorise such blatant abuses of that system. Even if one were to argue that the system was to blame, there is still no link here to the constitution of this United Kingdom. Furthermore, as the Commons have now voted on a new expenses system, the matter ought surely to be laid to rest.
However, this Government clearly has too much to lose from leaving the matter there. They are perfectly aware that, facing electoral armageddon, a change in the voting system of this country would allow them to cling to power, most likely in coalition with the Liberals who have supported ailing and unpopular Labour Governments so many times in the past. It is a proposal that has, as far as I am aware, no popular clamour and would be pushed through Parliament in the most disgraceful of circumstances for the most perverse of intentions.
Yet, Brown knows now as much as Bush knew then (or at least their advisors) that a lie which so obviously contradicts the available evidence and is so departed from reality, repeated enough times becomes accepted wisdom. Perhaps millions of Americans still believe that the United States invaded Iraq to fight terrorism, despite in doing so toppling a dictator who loathed jihadists and creating Islamic terrorism where it had not hitherto existed. There is no difference in the principle of these two deceptions.
The supreme irony of course, is that our Prime Minister was no. 2 in a government which not only pledged to abolish boom and bust (thereby creating one of the most dramatic "busts" in living memory), but which was also elected in 1997 on the ticket of a new, open and transparent politics. They have either failed spectacularly on both counts or have built the last 12 years of administration on two twin pillars of treachery. Whichever it is, they are continuing to do so with more vigour each passing day. A general election is required now to remove this discredited Prime Minister of a discredited Government - voters would do well to do so, if only to assert their authority and righteous wrath. Let us all pray however, that a Conservative Government lives up to its promises where Labour's has not.
"A lie told often enough becomes the truth"
- Vladimir Lenin
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”
- Adolf Hitler
Putting aside the fact that it is very difficult to find any photographic close-up these days that is not touched-up, or indeed of the desirability of such a course of action when your face is being enlarged to around a hundred times its size; the Prime Minister's statements have a double-edged irony. The first is that these trivial side-tracks are coming from a man who we have all seen dismiss attacks by David Cameron over the cohesion the Government by claiming that he is not concentrating on the 'big issues'. The second of course is that in doing so, and so visibly displaying the Government's complete poverty of direction and ideas, he is exposing himself to that insult which he so often levies at David Cameron - that he has no policies and is simply unfit to govern.
But where, I believe I am right in saying, the Prime Minister distinguishes himself from all previous Governments is that this poverty of ideas has led to the increasingly frequent spouting of clear, obvious and really rather large lies from the Cabinet benches in a frenzied attempt to cling to power. I believe I am also right in saying that this is a most disgraceful and rotten way to conduct Government, one that does however have a precedent with the Prime Minister's predecessor surrounding the motives for entry into the Iraq War.
One of the largest and, to my mind, most baffling of Labour lies being peddled at the moment concerns the Conservatives' plans to abolish inheritance tax below £1 million. I would very much like to write at length on this particular point, were it not so self-explanatory. Kicking off the Labour election campaign early in the year, Ed Balls claimed that "They [the Conservatives] want to have an inheritance tax cut which goes to millionaires" - an impossibility surely, given that the qualification for this particular tax cut is that one is not a millionaire. However, it appears that this claim is so radically departed from reality that it has caused a collective silence on the minds of those who hear it. The lie is simply so huge that nobody dares to challenge it.
Another example was the bizarre spectacle this afternoon of watching the Leader of the Opposition attack the massive budget deficit Labour had incurred between 1997 and 2007 - the largest in the industrial world he said, and the reason why Britain was so hard hit by the financial meltdown - only for the Prime Minister to reply by claiming the exact opposite. The United Kingdom entered the recession with the lowest public debt of any industrial nation he said, and that is why the Government has been able to help so many families and business get through the recession.
There is no doubt in my mind that this is very deliberate. Call me an insane conspiracy theorist if you wish, but the New Labour machine has been characterised by, if nothing else, its extensive use of spin to get away with saying that black is indeed white. It does not take a massive stretch of the imagination to construe that this army of spin doctors may use psychological methods of deception - such as those championed by Derren Brown - to mislead voters. Indeed, they would not be doing their job properly (one I do not believe ought to exist) if they did not.
One example of this deliberate misleading of the electorate is the bizarre contention that the recent expenses scandal warrants changes to the constitution of this country. There is simply no connection between the two. It is an out-and-out lie as much as that which attempted (and succeeded) in forming an imaginary link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Both the US Government then and the UK Government now have exploited a catastrophe to further an entirely separate end.
It was The Times that yesterday claimed "The fall-out from the expenses scandal has shaken Parliament and called into question the way the Commons works." Why? How has it done this? The expenses scandal was committed by individual MPs abusing a system of financial renumeration for their own ends. Those to blame are the MPs themselves and those members of the Fees Office who thought it pertinent to authorise such blatant abuses of that system. Even if one were to argue that the system was to blame, there is still no link here to the constitution of this United Kingdom. Furthermore, as the Commons have now voted on a new expenses system, the matter ought surely to be laid to rest.
However, this Government clearly has too much to lose from leaving the matter there. They are perfectly aware that, facing electoral armageddon, a change in the voting system of this country would allow them to cling to power, most likely in coalition with the Liberals who have supported ailing and unpopular Labour Governments so many times in the past. It is a proposal that has, as far as I am aware, no popular clamour and would be pushed through Parliament in the most disgraceful of circumstances for the most perverse of intentions.
Yet, Brown knows now as much as Bush knew then (or at least their advisors) that a lie which so obviously contradicts the available evidence and is so departed from reality, repeated enough times becomes accepted wisdom. Perhaps millions of Americans still believe that the United States invaded Iraq to fight terrorism, despite in doing so toppling a dictator who loathed jihadists and creating Islamic terrorism where it had not hitherto existed. There is no difference in the principle of these two deceptions.
The supreme irony of course, is that our Prime Minister was no. 2 in a government which not only pledged to abolish boom and bust (thereby creating one of the most dramatic "busts" in living memory), but which was also elected in 1997 on the ticket of a new, open and transparent politics. They have either failed spectacularly on both counts or have built the last 12 years of administration on two twin pillars of treachery. Whichever it is, they are continuing to do so with more vigour each passing day. A general election is required now to remove this discredited Prime Minister of a discredited Government - voters would do well to do so, if only to assert their authority and righteous wrath. Let us all pray however, that a Conservative Government lives up to its promises where Labour's has not.
"A lie told often enough becomes the truth"
- Vladimir Lenin
“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it”
- Adolf Hitler
Tuesday, 18 September 2007
Why Maggie met Gordo
Beneath all the in-fighting, mud-slinging, and speculation concerning Baroness Thatcher's visit to No. 10 last week, there lies an important milestone in British political and economic history that is far more symbolic and simple than any of the dailies seemed to have noticed. Amid questions raised over the perceived party 'morality' of the visit, the Rt. Hon. Lady's mental faculties and Rob Wilson, MP's incomprehensible accusation of 'exploitation' on the part of the prime minister, there lies three simple facts.
1. Gordon Brown invited Lady Thatcher after a series of letters between them
2. It would have been unthinkable for her to decline
3. She has visited each one of her successors at Downing Street since leaving in 1990
Though these facts have been very confused, they nonetheless do not make the event unremarkable. The prime minister and Baroness Thatcher emerged from No. 10 in noticeably higher spirits than they entered, and one may speculate they had a lot to talk about, standing on some firm common ground. The peppering of mutual compliments and the prime minister's 'conviction politicians' praise appears to confirm this. Minor details have, however, been characteristically blown out of proportion - one column even going so far as to highlight Lady Thatcher's choice of 'Labour' red frock (it was in fact bright fuchsia). Such speculations are of course pure nonsense, and completely beside the point. This is not a party issue. This is a former prime minister, and the founder of today's established order, visiting the incumbent. There should in fact be much less controversy surrounding this aspect owing to the fact that Lady Thatcher and her premiership has been all but disowned by the current leader of her party, David Cameron at a time when Labour has found itself confident enough to praise it. What is significant about this whole event is that in a purely symbolic way it concretely closes a circle in British politics that began its circumference on 3 May 1979 when the nation went to the polls to decide Britain's future. It is significant because the Labour Party, who passionately fought the Conservatives' policies nail and tooth throughout Lady Thatcher's premiership, is now led by a man who openly praises the reforms of the 1980s, and indeed the much-hated woman who enacted them, as the foundation of the current political order and the basis of Britain's subsequent prosperity.
This should not be as shocking as some make it out to be. Parties change with the times in order to survive, primarily because they are not entities unto themselves but are composed of people. People who are diverse, pragmatic, and open to a change of opinion. Few would now believe that in the nineteenth century, the Lib Dems in their previous incarnation as the Liberals were a hard-line free market capitalism party. Similarly, few in the nineteenth century could have imagined the Conservatives so enthusiastically embracing the post-war socialism that dominated British politics up until the late seventies (and for them, until 11 February 1975, when Margaret Thatcher was grudgingly elected leader). It should not really be all that strange that Labour have employed Lady Thatcher's preferred advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi either. They are after all a competitive company who can work for whoever they like, and their credentials certainly make them desirable for any party. It does however, given the timing, have a startling symbolic effect.
It is nonetheless entirely symbolic and in no way surprising. Most people have been well aware for some time that Tony Blair deliberately forged Labour to be the natural successor of the Thatcherite Conservative Party - it was just too early to say it out loud. Ten years is a long time - what was taboo in 1997 has evolved into a gradual acceptance to the point that what was unspeakable then can today be blatantly proclaimed on the steps of 10 Downing Street itself. And it need not be seen as an abandonment of principle either. Being called Labour does not explicitly require you to be a socialist party - Labour have arguably served workers in this country since 1997 far better than any socialists could. Indeed, in The Constitution of Liberty - a Thatcherite Bible of sorts - F. A. Hayek makes the point that protectionism, wage controls, and strong unions – vanquished by Lady Thatcher in the 1980s - actually reduce real wages over time and cause widespread unemployment (incidentally, Labour's record since 1997 in this respect seems to have been lost on most socialists).
The trouble with the Conservative Party over the next decade was that they hadn't realised this. Their ten-year identity crisis occurred because - as one of Lady Thatcher's advisers put it to John Ranelagh in 1990 - 'the Tory Party is not a Thatcherite Party, that's the tragedy'. And it never was - the hierarchy tolerated her because she won elections but never much cared for her policies, many openly despising her. They wasted no time in 'stabbing her in the back' once she began to be perceived as an electoral liability and was henceforth removed in the most back-handed way. The classical liberalism espoused by her (small) wing of the party since 1975 has always been much closer to the that of the nineteenth century Liberal Party or Whigs than the Tories. The lady herself actually confirmed this at Conference in 1983 by stating 'I would not mind betting that if Mr. Gladstone [four-time Liberal prime minister 1868-94] were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party'. Lord Harris, too, has described Thatcherism as 'more or less common ground between Conservatives and Liberals in the nineteenth century'.
Hence, if the Conservatives appear to have found their feet since their election of David Cameron in 2005, it is precisely because said leader has been busy scrubbing Lady Thatcher from his party's history - explicitly refusing even to appear in the same photograph as her. The image then, of Gordon Brown at the door of No. 10 with Lady Thatcher on the very same day John Gummer announced the Blueprint for a Green Economy with the words 'I am a Tory' has an irony that hardly needs pointing out. Further, it is now obvious that, despite her deeply-held loyalty in the past, Lady Thatcher's very membership of the Conservative Party was one of political necessity rather than any real fealty. Throughout her political career before being elected leader in 1975 she was a member, and later, minister of a party whose policies she abhorred. Indeed, The Constitution of Liberty, a book Lady Thatcher once slammed on a table with the words 'This is what we believe' holds such a vindication of her actions in this respect. Hayek wrote that
At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty, those who cherish freedom...generally have little choice but to support the conservative parties
Hayek wrote those words in 1959. The situation has changed considerably since then, though arguably only within the last few years. With Labour embracing monetarism and the free market, Independence on the rise, and even - saints alive - the Lib Dems embracing personal responsibility and market mechanisms, Cameron's Conservatives have been released of the burden of being the sole 'neoliberal' party in Britain. This has allowed them to return to being just that - conservative. Thatcherism was less a philosophy than a mission, and once that mission had been completed, namely (in the words of John Ranelagh) to establish 'a series of hard, practical achievements that would stand the test of time and...become common ground for political debate' it was defunct. This is why, after twenty years of preaching to the opposition, William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith, and Michael Howard found it so difficult to present a coherent set of policies for their party. It was, put simply, because everything the party had campaigned for since 1975 became common ground by 1997 and thus, taken for granted.
Keith Joseph once remarked in 1975 that it was only in April of the previous year that he was converted to 'real' Conservatism, professing that 'I had thought I was a Conservative but now I see I was not really one at all'. In fact, he was still wasn't. David Cameron, in steering his party back to old traditions such as suspicion of material progress (We're too rich to be happy - The Times, 14 September 2007) and censorship in areas of entertainment like video games is in fact returning his party to true Conservatism. Joseph's words in 1975 were necessary for their time because he could hardly have called himself a liberal at a time when the Lib Dems were still called the Liberal Party, and he was, at any rate a member of the Conservatives when there was not a chance in hell that either the Liberals nor Labour would ever come close to accepting the Thatcherite policies he devised.
With this in mind it can certainly be no coincidence that Cameron is the first Tory leader since the 14th earl of Home in 1963 to have not risen from lowly beginnings. Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith, and Michael Howard all worked their way up through the grammar school system - 'self-made men' so to speak - whereas Cameron, son of a stock-broker and 5th cousin of Queen Elizabeth II twice removed, attended Eton College. Incidentally it was Heath, elected in 1965, who first attempted to introduce market reforms during his premiership in 1970-74. There is then, no mystery as to why Lady Thatcher appeared so publicly outside No. 10 with Gordon Brown. The plain truth is that Labour now happens to stand more for what she believes in than the Conservatives, and she is no doubt hurt by the latter's recent treatment of her. It also conveniently symbolises the setting in stone of everything she went out to achieve and reveals her premiership in the 1980s for what it was - nothing less than a revolution in its truest sense. A revolution, a turn, a circle right round to the political and economic climate that once made Britain - and then arguably the whole western world - so great. Indeed, it could scarcely be more complete if Labour changed their name to the Liberal Party.
1. Gordon Brown invited Lady Thatcher after a series of letters between them
2. It would have been unthinkable for her to decline
3. She has visited each one of her successors at Downing Street since leaving in 1990
Though these facts have been very confused, they nonetheless do not make the event unremarkable. The prime minister and Baroness Thatcher emerged from No. 10 in noticeably higher spirits than they entered, and one may speculate they had a lot to talk about, standing on some firm common ground. The peppering of mutual compliments and the prime minister's 'conviction politicians' praise appears to confirm this. Minor details have, however, been characteristically blown out of proportion - one column even going so far as to highlight Lady Thatcher's choice of 'Labour' red frock (it was in fact bright fuchsia). Such speculations are of course pure nonsense, and completely beside the point. This is not a party issue. This is a former prime minister, and the founder of today's established order, visiting the incumbent. There should in fact be much less controversy surrounding this aspect owing to the fact that Lady Thatcher and her premiership has been all but disowned by the current leader of her party, David Cameron at a time when Labour has found itself confident enough to praise it. What is significant about this whole event is that in a purely symbolic way it concretely closes a circle in British politics that began its circumference on 3 May 1979 when the nation went to the polls to decide Britain's future. It is significant because the Labour Party, who passionately fought the Conservatives' policies nail and tooth throughout Lady Thatcher's premiership, is now led by a man who openly praises the reforms of the 1980s, and indeed the much-hated woman who enacted them, as the foundation of the current political order and the basis of Britain's subsequent prosperity.
This should not be as shocking as some make it out to be. Parties change with the times in order to survive, primarily because they are not entities unto themselves but are composed of people. People who are diverse, pragmatic, and open to a change of opinion. Few would now believe that in the nineteenth century, the Lib Dems in their previous incarnation as the Liberals were a hard-line free market capitalism party. Similarly, few in the nineteenth century could have imagined the Conservatives so enthusiastically embracing the post-war socialism that dominated British politics up until the late seventies (and for them, until 11 February 1975, when Margaret Thatcher was grudgingly elected leader). It should not really be all that strange that Labour have employed Lady Thatcher's preferred advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi either. They are after all a competitive company who can work for whoever they like, and their credentials certainly make them desirable for any party. It does however, given the timing, have a startling symbolic effect.
It is nonetheless entirely symbolic and in no way surprising. Most people have been well aware for some time that Tony Blair deliberately forged Labour to be the natural successor of the Thatcherite Conservative Party - it was just too early to say it out loud. Ten years is a long time - what was taboo in 1997 has evolved into a gradual acceptance to the point that what was unspeakable then can today be blatantly proclaimed on the steps of 10 Downing Street itself. And it need not be seen as an abandonment of principle either. Being called Labour does not explicitly require you to be a socialist party - Labour have arguably served workers in this country since 1997 far better than any socialists could. Indeed, in The Constitution of Liberty - a Thatcherite Bible of sorts - F. A. Hayek makes the point that protectionism, wage controls, and strong unions – vanquished by Lady Thatcher in the 1980s - actually reduce real wages over time and cause widespread unemployment (incidentally, Labour's record since 1997 in this respect seems to have been lost on most socialists).
The trouble with the Conservative Party over the next decade was that they hadn't realised this. Their ten-year identity crisis occurred because - as one of Lady Thatcher's advisers put it to John Ranelagh in 1990 - 'the Tory Party is not a Thatcherite Party, that's the tragedy'. And it never was - the hierarchy tolerated her because she won elections but never much cared for her policies, many openly despising her. They wasted no time in 'stabbing her in the back' once she began to be perceived as an electoral liability and was henceforth removed in the most back-handed way. The classical liberalism espoused by her (small) wing of the party since 1975 has always been much closer to the that of the nineteenth century Liberal Party or Whigs than the Tories. The lady herself actually confirmed this at Conference in 1983 by stating 'I would not mind betting that if Mr. Gladstone [four-time Liberal prime minister 1868-94] were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party'. Lord Harris, too, has described Thatcherism as 'more or less common ground between Conservatives and Liberals in the nineteenth century'.
Hence, if the Conservatives appear to have found their feet since their election of David Cameron in 2005, it is precisely because said leader has been busy scrubbing Lady Thatcher from his party's history - explicitly refusing even to appear in the same photograph as her. The image then, of Gordon Brown at the door of No. 10 with Lady Thatcher on the very same day John Gummer announced the Blueprint for a Green Economy with the words 'I am a Tory' has an irony that hardly needs pointing out. Further, it is now obvious that, despite her deeply-held loyalty in the past, Lady Thatcher's very membership of the Conservative Party was one of political necessity rather than any real fealty. Throughout her political career before being elected leader in 1975 she was a member, and later, minister of a party whose policies she abhorred. Indeed, The Constitution of Liberty, a book Lady Thatcher once slammed on a table with the words 'This is what we believe' holds such a vindication of her actions in this respect. Hayek wrote that
At a time when most movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty, those who cherish freedom...generally have little choice but to support the conservative parties
Hayek wrote those words in 1959. The situation has changed considerably since then, though arguably only within the last few years. With Labour embracing monetarism and the free market, Independence on the rise, and even - saints alive - the Lib Dems embracing personal responsibility and market mechanisms, Cameron's Conservatives have been released of the burden of being the sole 'neoliberal' party in Britain. This has allowed them to return to being just that - conservative. Thatcherism was less a philosophy than a mission, and once that mission had been completed, namely (in the words of John Ranelagh) to establish 'a series of hard, practical achievements that would stand the test of time and...become common ground for political debate' it was defunct. This is why, after twenty years of preaching to the opposition, William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith, and Michael Howard found it so difficult to present a coherent set of policies for their party. It was, put simply, because everything the party had campaigned for since 1975 became common ground by 1997 and thus, taken for granted.
Keith Joseph once remarked in 1975 that it was only in April of the previous year that he was converted to 'real' Conservatism, professing that 'I had thought I was a Conservative but now I see I was not really one at all'. In fact, he was still wasn't. David Cameron, in steering his party back to old traditions such as suspicion of material progress (We're too rich to be happy - The Times, 14 September 2007) and censorship in areas of entertainment like video games is in fact returning his party to true Conservatism. Joseph's words in 1975 were necessary for their time because he could hardly have called himself a liberal at a time when the Lib Dems were still called the Liberal Party, and he was, at any rate a member of the Conservatives when there was not a chance in hell that either the Liberals nor Labour would ever come close to accepting the Thatcherite policies he devised.
With this in mind it can certainly be no coincidence that Cameron is the first Tory leader since the 14th earl of Home in 1963 to have not risen from lowly beginnings. Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith, and Michael Howard all worked their way up through the grammar school system - 'self-made men' so to speak - whereas Cameron, son of a stock-broker and 5th cousin of Queen Elizabeth II twice removed, attended Eton College. Incidentally it was Heath, elected in 1965, who first attempted to introduce market reforms during his premiership in 1970-74. There is then, no mystery as to why Lady Thatcher appeared so publicly outside No. 10 with Gordon Brown. The plain truth is that Labour now happens to stand more for what she believes in than the Conservatives, and she is no doubt hurt by the latter's recent treatment of her. It also conveniently symbolises the setting in stone of everything she went out to achieve and reveals her premiership in the 1980s for what it was - nothing less than a revolution in its truest sense. A revolution, a turn, a circle right round to the political and economic climate that once made Britain - and then arguably the whole western world - so great. Indeed, it could scarcely be more complete if Labour changed their name to the Liberal Party.
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