ThinkScotland is twenty years old – and we’re reviving some of our blasts from our past – this one was first published on 19 April 2013 following Margaret Thatcher’s funeral two days previously.
IT HAS BECOME a common phrase to say, “we’re all Thatcherites now”. I have possibly used it myself, but it is of course only a half-truth – and in so many respects it is utter tosh.
With Margaret Thatcher’s remains now turned to dust and residing alongside those of her soulmate in Chelsea Hospital there shall no doubt be a reassessment over time about what she really achieved, what her successes and failures amounted to and what the unintended consequences of those outcomes were. This process should, hopefully, be given some clarity and suffer from less propaganda from all sides, the pro and anti, through the annual release of her papers (thirty years on) up until 2020.
Nevertheless we can already say that Thatcher undoubtedly changed the political discourse by moving the centre ground – something that Blair had to recognise before he could go on to win three elections himself – and that there is ample evidence of this.
That, for example, the terms of debate about public expenditure, state ownership of businesses, the boundaries between public and private economic activity, and lower business taxes, have in the political mainstream been set by what Thatcher argued for. It is in this regard that we are all Thatcherites now, it is in the same manner that we all live in a nuclear age, that we are democrats and welfarists.
Nuclear power or weaponry cannot be dis-invented, we have to live with it and its consequences; the case for democracy through universal suffrage (a relatively youthful concept) is widely accepted although we may argue about the best voting systems and institutional models; and, that some form of welfare state should exist in Britain and across Europe is rarely challenged (no matter what people say about Iain Duncan Smith) – it is about its scope and the balance between providers and recipients where the debate takes place.
This does not mean for one minute that those in British politics and wider afield (for the impact of Thatcher’s privatisations has been truly international) are happy or even comfortable about living in this Thatcherite consensus. Many would love to break the new mould and retool the old one, others would have us adopt completely new propositions (outside the European Union or even deeper in a United States of Europe) that cannot be said to be part of the Thatcherite disposition but might develop it further or put it into retreat.
Others just hope that they can get by ignoring the realities of market economics and sound money and are only rumbled when they are out of office and no longer responsible (John Swinney being a prime example, see Bill Jamieson’s column this week). The point is that all being Thatcherites now is about the current consensus, even if it is an unwittingly obvious one for so many that are in denial – and that this consensus can be changed – which is why there has been such a battle about her legacy in the past week.
The first stage to changing the consensus (especially for those that wish to take us back to the seemingly glorious seventies) is to challenge its legitimacy and its moral foundations. The next is then to argue for pushing back the boundaries of where modern-day Thatcherism lies with a self-righteous belief that marginalising it must be the right thing to do.
So, although we might all be Thatcherites now, those that wish this to remain the case will need to battle over the lady’s record, defend her motives and see that their view of history and all the justifications for her actions can be supported even if they might seem difficult to digest under contemporary mores (such as her loyalty to General Pinochet in return for his help in saving British servicemen’s lives).
What they cannot do is go around apologising for her policies, distancing themselves from her record and undermining her legacy.
That is not to say she never got anything wrong and that supporters of Thatcherism cannot acknowledge this. As we learnt from the Bishop of London’s address at her funeral this week in the telling of the letter from the young boy and her hand-written reply, she was only too aware of man’s propensity for error and the existence of original sin. But if we simply deconstruct her work without relation to the context of the times, to the pressures and challenges that she faced and fail to take into account that her biggest enemy was always the patrician old guard in her party we will have an incomplete debate.
Thus, it is possible to argue that Margaret Thatcher’s support for Treasury control over the setting of interest rates rather than having an independent central bank was short-sighted, or maintaining the mortgage interest relief was a distorting subsidy that had to go, without damaging Margaret Thatcher for, if anything, it goes with the grain of Thatcherism itself.
That the Prime Minister said on Radio 4 “we are all Thatcherites now” is not surprising, and that he had the common decency and courage to argue that she saved the country is for those guarding her flame a welcome response that he at least understands the context she had to work under. But to call David Cameron a Thatcherite simply because of this would be preposterous; Thatcher would never have countenanced such interventions as a minimum price for alcohol and I doubt she would have thought of plain packaging of cigarettes even though she did not smoke. She would not have been duped by the green lobby and felt the need to bend the knee to their contrivances but would instead have challenged them head on defending nuclear power – and ironically coal-fired power generation – as necessary against the fight against fuel poverty.
Operating within the Thatcherite consensus does not make all Conservatives Thatcherite and of course some have never been. The most ridiculous statement this week came from David Mundell, the Scottish Conservative’s sole Tory MP, who felt the need to say something and found the usual platitudes that few could disagree with. As the Party’s Chairman in Scotland he obviously felt he had a job to represent his members’ views but his praise for her conviction rang rather hollow – for if Mundell had had his way she would never have won re-election in 1983 or 1987. Conviction politics was the last thing on his mind, it was the antithesis of what he believed in when, in 1981 and unhappy with Margaret Thatcher’s government, he chose to join the SDP, becoming a councillor under that party’s colours between 1984-87, rejoining the party long after she had been removed from office.
Such was Thatcher’s success that those consistently opposed to her within her own party (arise John Hayes MP, defender of nationalised steel and opponent of US cruise missiles on British soil, now working for Cameron in Downing Street); those that abandoned ship to oppose her (step forward Anna Soubry, now, like Mundell, a Tory Minister) and those in other parties that were always against her have to admit they are all Thatcherites now. But they were not always Thatcherites and the extent to which they are is only because they were defeated again – and again.
If people wish to ensure these doubters, plotters, splitters and jumpers do not switch again, erode her legacy or create a new consensus then those that believe not just in Thatcher the woman but what she actually stood for cannot let the flame go out. They must continue to fight every battle, slay the myths and guard the history – not just against the collectivists but against those that would compromise for the promise of office or popular appeal.
We are not all Thatcherites now – but to make that phrase have any semblance of truth requires the blue revolution to continue.
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Photo of the cover of Scottish Conservative – a time when David Mundell was a member of the SDP.
