Excellent post.

I’m very hopeful that it is what I’ve wanted all along: the birth of a new strand of Whig radicalism.

The signs are hopeful: the political reform and civil liberties sections of the Lib/Con deal are impressive, and there must be a reasonable chance of them being implemented.

The cuts that are about to be unleashed on us at the end of the epoch of neoliberalism will now be accompanied by a quite different political culture. This time the Conservative government will want to be seen as seeking to mitigate the impact on the poor: it will be sad not triumphant, inclusive not racist, understanding not contemptuous.

Oh, they’ll spin it this time.

Marvelous.

The hundreds of thousands turfed onto the dole in the upcoming budget will be able to look forward to a new, inclusive, compassionate workfare…as promised by both wings of our new, definitely not Thatcherite coalition.

Thanks. Just as a PS Sunny dropped the – I thought very short – bit where I praised the Coalition agreement for its wonderful commitment to roll back the database state.

Hmmnn.. The King is Dead! Long live….. errrm, what exactly?

(PS: Can’t we have at least a little time to dance on the grave of Thatcherism, if not it’s actual founder, before we start the work of re-inventing the left?)

The wide-eyed optimism of the Left never ceases to amaze me. Even when we have a homophobic Minister for Equality, and a slash’n'burn Minister for Work and Pensions, and a neo-conservative imperialist in charge of foreign policy, a dimwit buffoon in charge of finance, and a chap with estimated wealth of £40 million in charge of the country telling us to pull our bootstraps up.

The shit will hit the fan soon enough, then we will really see that this coalition has no clothes, not even the fig-leaf of civil liberties (apologies for the mixed metaphor).

5:

The minister for equalities is Lynne Featherstone, not known for homophobia.

@6

She’s a junior minister. Theresa May as well has getting the Home Office and Wimmin brief is Minster for Equality, and her voting record speaks for itself.

PS: see here for the full line-up.

‘When Thatcher scythed jobs across the UK this was accompanied by a violent assault on Trade Unions and a moralistic contempt for those who did not ‘get on their bike’ to find another job.’

Indeed. But, Anthony, what do you think the coalition government is currently planning for the unemployed and other non-working benefit recipients (single parents, those oin disability benefit) if not a ‘moralistic’ assault to get them into low-paid jobs?

Oh yes, the rhetoric will be different. The government will talk – as New Labour did before it – about ‘empowerment’ and so forth. It will try not to sound ‘contemptuous’ as you put it. But the practice is likely to be tougher work-related eligibility conditions well in excess of those that the Thatcher governments introduced.

There are times in this post when you seem to be saying that a mere change in the discursive presentation of policy marks the end of ‘Thatcherism’. No: that’s just a shift in the rhetoric to facilitate the continuation of the same practice. And saying this isn’t a matter of left-wing ‘vanity’: its a matter of being realistic about what the colaition government is actually going to do.

Macmillan who also ran a Cabinet of Etonians…

There is only one Etonian in the Cabinet.

Stuart – you’ll need to look at my full post on OK to see how significantly Cameron has repositioned the Conservative Party from being Thatcherite to being Whig. One important aspect I don’t discuss there is that the Coalition is betting on their getting out of the cuts and into growth in three to four years and they claim to aim to do this with a different set of policies to Thatcher’s.

I am not predicting the Coalition will succeed. Much too early for that. I want people to think about what the Tories are trying to achieve as a political-electoral force.

And then there is the question of what is Labour going to do now? Say that it too is in favour of 40 % capital gains tax? Hence my suggestion that it will need the energy of democratic republicanism for any effective response.

Pill: why do you think it is optimistic to say that the Conservative Party may have succeeded in reconfiguring itself as a successful electoral force and that unless the Lib Dems achieve genuine democratic reform they will be destroyed?

Tim J: apologies, I was using Eton as a ‘metaphor’ for what I describe in OurKingdom as the “scions of perhaps the narrowest and most homogeneous elite in the world”.

Anthony: fair enough, I will look at the longer piece at OK.

But at least in relation to welfare-to-work, and acknowledging that no actual policy has been announced yet, I don’t see any discontinuity with Thatcherism. In this area, we just seem to be continuing down a trajectory of increasing conditionality which started about 1985 when Thatcher introduced the compulsory ‘Restart’ interviews which now seem charmingly mild….Its just that politicians have learned a more ‘compassionate’ language to talk about shoving the poor into bad jobs….’empowerment’, ‘activation’, ‘springboards’, ‘being along side you’, etc.

(Note: I don’t actually think conditionality is necessarily wrong in principle – but I do think it can add to injustice in a society that has huge background inequalities. Conditionality in (perhaps) the Sweden of the 1970s is one thing, conditionality in the UK right now is another.)

@3. Anthony Barnett

“where I praised the Coalition agreement for its wonderful commitment to roll back the database state.”

What on earth make you think that? Do you seriously think that huge doughnut building in Cheltenham (GCHQ) will be shut down next week and turned into a housing complex for the homeless? Naive, I am afraid.

CARNIVORE, ECHELON et al will continue. GCHQ will expand over the next few years, not contract. As we use the internet more, GCHQ will eavesdrop more.

Until GCHQ is closed you will not be able to say that the “database state” is over. Indeed, even if it was closed, the government would just off-shore its activities.

@12

I think it’s optimistic to a) announce the death of Thatcherism before seeing what this Gov will actually do (wishy-washy coalition document notwithstanding); b) following on from this announce the end of the Murdochracy; c) pretend that the glut of right-wingers in key cabinet positions won’t make a difference.

And I’m not sure what this:

The cuts that are about to be unleashed on us at the end of the epoch of neoliberalism will now be accompanied by a quite different political culture. This time the Conservative government will want to be seen as seeking to mitigate the impact on the poor: it will be sad not triumphant, inclusive not racist, understanding not contemptuous.

is supposed to mean. So rather than slapping the poor when taking away their benefits the ConDems will be stroking them? The end result is the same thing. If I robbed you with and left a diversity briefing behind (“We are an equal opportunities thief…”) you’d be just as pissed off as if I robbed you the old-fashioned way.

I disagree with your main premise, I suppose. I see this Gov as a continuation of neo-liberal Thatcherism – evoking the spirit of Blair as well with it’s language of “choice” and “big society”. The worst, probably, of both worlds.

has any one asked maggie what she thinks? or isn’t she aware of whats going on in the real world? it must be a shock for right wing tories

Anthony: I’ve now read the longer piece at OK.

I agree very much with the call for a renewed democratic republicanism at the end of the piece and I hope that Labour’s renewal/reshaping will be of this kind – without assuming that democratic republicanism has to work only through the Labour party or indeed any party.

Like you, I am appalled by the authoritarian remnants within Labour – Reid, Blunkett – who reemerged to kill the ‘rainbow coalition’ idea. I’m worried that the attitudes they represent are widely shared in Labour – and that many in the party have yet to grasp just how far the party’s direction needs to change in areas like civil liberties and democratic renewal. Jon Trickett’s piece at Next Left yesterday is promising – but even here the wording is sometimes too guarded in terms of saying, frankly, ‘We got this wrong!’

Last week the Democracy Demo left Trafalgar Square for Smith Square to put pressure on the Lib Dems. Maybe tomorrow it can go to Labour HQ and help encourage a bit of rethinking…

if neocons were in power in america and wanted to invade other countries does anyone think this con/lib coalition would say no any different from blair?

re stuart white the lab-lib coalition didn’t have the numbers to be truly stable. constantly blackmailed by small nationalist and unionist parties.

the age-old vanity of the left that proclaims it has seen it all before and nothing ever changes

That’s a risk, certainly. But I do think it is pretty telling that if you take your long essay, search/replace the word ‘coalition’ with the word ‘woman’, and tidy up the grammar a bit, you get a piece that could have been written in it’s entirety in 1979.

Talk is cheap. I’m not believing a fucking word of it until I see some concrete actions.

‘if neocons were in power in america and wanted to invade other countries does anyone think this con/lib coalition would say no any different from blair?’

(a) They’re not in power, Obam is.
(b) I hardly think ‘the Coalition is no better than Blair’ would be a reason to vote Labour even if it were true.

I’m with #21, wait until Cameron meets with Obama before anyone starts getting excited about the restoration of liberty.

paul @ 19: that may be true – my point is less about the viability of the rainbow coalition as such than about some of the reasons and attitudes that some in Labour had for opposing it…

“The hundreds of thousands turfed onto the dole in the upcoming budget”

So unemployment never went beyond 2 million in the last government?

Honestly. So this government might be as bad as the last. If you’re suggesting Labour are some kind of alternative, they’re not.

What are you suggesting? A government of Greens?

Another article in support of “the Coalition”.

I chuckled when I read this:

“The end of Thatcherism is a defeat for Murdoch and the Sun.”

Has Anthony looked at the Sun recently? They’re over the moon. It doesnt look like Murdoch minds this coalition so much. Quite the opposite.

@6 Mr S Pill

“The wide-eyed optimism of the Left never ceases to amaze me. Even when we have a homophobic Minister for Equality, and a slash’n’burn Minister for Work and Pensions, and a neo-conservative imperialist in charge of foreign policy, a dimwit buffoon in charge of finance, and a chap with estimated wealth of £40 million in charge of the country telling us to pull our bootstraps up.“.

Spot-on.

You give me hope, S Pill, along with “galen10″ and very very very few other chaps here on LibCon (the name really is turning into a prophecy). Otherwise, it really looks like we’ll have to put up with more sycophantic delusional pieces and comments. Unbelieveable that a junior minister from the LibDems makes it suddenly irrelevant to have a government packed at the highest level with right-wing neo cons, Europhobes, homophobes and social conservatives.

@ 21 “the age-old vanity of the left that proclaims it has seen it all before and nothing ever changes”

I thought the age old vanity of the left was the opposite – they belive everything is new, history is bunk, all problems and therefore all solutions are new, hence all change is “progress” and they claim to be progressive, as in moving towards some utopia which no one has ever tried to move towards before. This is one of the reasons why lefties tend to be young, because the young naturally measure everything against their own relatively short life experince, and beleive that they have invented everything for the first time.

The reality is of course that nothing is really new, all problems have occured before, and “progress” is always progress towards a “new” status quo, which has existed before countless times.

“In this way Cameron aims to transform the Tory Party back into being a Whig party representing of one-nation Toryism”

Anthony – I don’t understand your reference to Whiggery. Any historian of the 19th C should know that the one nation strain of Toryism stood in complete opposition to the free-market-is-king Whig attitude. The blinking name comes from a book by Disraeli, and people like Lord Shaftesbury would have loathed the Whigs.

Can you explain what you mean by this Whiggish Toryism?

Parasite: My reference comes from David Marquand’s use of the term in his four categories of shaping political influences in British democracy, as you can see in my OurKingdom article.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/anthony-barnett/end-of-thatcherism

The reality is of course that nothing is really new, all problems have occured before, and “progress” is always progress towards a “new” status quo, which has existed before countless times.

Are others vaguely intrigued as to the identity of any “status quo, which has existed before countless times” that is even roughly analogous to the astonishing and, to my mind unprecedented, leap forward of say, the post-war settlement?

“The hundreds of thousands turfed onto the dole in the upcoming budget”

What are you suggesting? A government of Greens?

It’ll go a lot higher than 2m…as a matter of policy.

This is an unmistakeably Thatcherite coalition.

@ 32 Believe it or not history didn’t start with the “post war settlement” – assuming you mean post WW2, rather than the Treaty of Versailles, or any other post war treaty.
My point is that the left wing narritive of the status quo (and thus it’s opposite, striving for “progress” away from the status quo) is bogus, there is no such thing as the status quo, just the consequence of the cumulative preceeding change at whichever point in history you happen to be looking at.
I think the 00s were the fifth period of apparently “unprecedented change” (an oxymoron all on it’s own) in my relatively short lifetime.

Anthony
I actually think it is the rebirth of a form Thatchrism.
Thatcherism was a strange mixture of Gladstonian free market liberalism and Reaganite foreign policy (precursor to neo conservatism) and social conservatism.
True hey seem to have ditched social conservatism, although I will wait and see what happens to policies on crime and civil liberties. I note apart from ID cards all the other “illiberal” legislation brought in by Labour are not been repealed. Also the surveillance society, it will be interesting if there is an increase in CCTV cameras in the next 5 years.
Foreign policy seem to be the same neo conservative rhetoric. Looking at Hague’s speech about Iran
Econimically if you aksed Mrs T what was her top 8 wishes
1. Get rid of state education subtlely and replace with vouchers.
2. Privatise the NHS
3. Bring in some form of workfare.
4. End the welfare state
5. Reduce the public sector to the bare minimum. (defence and police)
6. Get out of euro model (The one I actually agree with)
7. Get rid of all forms of union power
8. Get rid of the BBC and give the channels to Murdoch
I envisage that these will come to pass, if not in 5 years of right wing rule , certainly in 10 years
I would say these are the objectives of the orange bookers and Cameron boys.
Read Daniel Hannon
4.

@ 32 Believe it or not history didn’t start with the “post war settlement” – assuming you mean post WW2, rather than the Treaty of Versailles, or any other post war treaty.
My point is that the left wing narritive of the status quo (and thus it’s opposite, striving for “progress” away from the status quo) is bogus, there is no such thing as the status quo, just the consequence of the cumulative preceeding change at whichever point in history you happen to be looking at.
I think the 00s were the fifth period of apparently “unprecedented change” (an oxymoron all on it’s own) in my relatively short lifetime.

This is gibberish.

Are you implying that “the left” believes that “the status quo” is somehow immutable? What an intriguing conceit.

Do you claim people who might use the phrase “the war” are somehow necessarily ignorant of history, I won’t lie to you, I suspect it’s unlikely they’ll be talking about say, the First Punic War?

Would you claim that the American Revolution for instance, or universal suffrage were not epochal, transcendent events without equivalent in all history? In fact one could make a case that the 00s, as part of the ongoing rollback of the gains of socialism, is part of an unprecedented change.

The BBC one will happen by default, the way it’s funded is anachronistic and makes no sense in the digital age (the one the BBC ironically keep telling us about)

State education has failed, despite all the money and all the reforms. Vouchers will at least allow interested parents to have a least worst choice

The NHS I would keep but access based on a minimum level of NI contributions and back to basic, reactive heath care

The welfare state is too entrenched to be got rid of (Whatever happened to Mr Blairs “stakeholder pension” BTW)

Workfare – the problem with it is (apart from trying to intriduce in a recession) ??

The EU is crumbling already, if one country fails, and it will, in 5 years the Euro will be history. And good riddance.

@ 36 ” Are you implying that “the left” believes that “the status quo” is somehow immutable? What an intriguing conceit”.

No you patronising prat, the opposite. The left belives that only the present matters, that context is everything (As the rest of your post illustrates……)

“Would you claim that the American Revolution for instance, or universal suffrage were not epochal, transcendent events without equivalent in all history?”

Yes absolutely I would, they were only transcedent the context of their time, there is nothing “universal” about them. You can just as easily argue that twitter is transcendantal, or the discovery of fire, the invention of the wheel, the list is endless, but without direct expeience of them, you can’t really compare one with the other. Different groups have been “liberated” and de-liberated at different points in history. The serfs were no doubt glad to see end of the feudal system, tenant farmers the end of the corn laws etc etc etc.
Have you ever actually read Marx, or Vygotsky ? Do you actually understand the constructivist underpinnings of left wing thought, or do you just re-gurgitate the guardian, as honed at Islington dinner parties ?

Anthony Barnett . The unions resisted technological development. The unions representing unskilled annd semi-skilled workers resisted their training so they could become craftsmen which meant they would have left their unions and entered the skilled unions. I never heard of unskilled union encouraging it’s unkilled workers to complete apprenticeships and then through study become a chartered engineers: as this would be detrimental to their voting power and income, even though it would increase upward social mobility. I have never heard of a union encouraging it’s members to become middle class professionals. How many members of ASLEF were encourage by the union to become chartered mechanical engineers desging trains, dockers to become port engineers, miners to become mining engineers, drivers to become chartered mechanical engineers designing vehicles. The unions are happy for class divisions to remain provided people remain members paying their subs and giving the leaders voting rights in the Labour Party. However, unions give no support to those who want to improve their education and training and become professional engineers or scientists or run their own business. Therefore most unions are against upward social mobility.

The unions representing the unskilled and semi-skilled power resulted in over manning. The power of the unions meant those people with sloppy , slap dash approach to work could not be fired. The shop steward was powerful than the foremen. The consuqence was that UK labour costs were too high and not enough of UK manufacture moved into the high value sector. Germany can afford to pay $41 an hour to it’s car workers because it has high levels of productivity and manufactures a high value high quality goods.

UK quality control was poor because of the power of the unions and low skills and the frequency of strikes. Part of the success of the Japnese cars was there high levels of reliability. The Uk was selling Jagars to the USA but their electric windows failed to work properly. A major exception was the chemical industry was largly free of strikes because there was need for a better educated workforce and a mistake could rsult in a fire and/or explosion killing or maiming people.

@38

So progress is impossible?

There’s a debate going on here about history and change I’m not able to engage with. But I’m proud to have precipitated it! There seems to be an assumption that being ‘right-wing’ and Thatcherism are one and the same and all that ‘really’ matters is what happens to the exploited. But there are other realities as well, which even if they are less important can make all the difference between winning and losing elections and political control of the state. I’m trying to think about these differences and therefore about the way things change even if – which is by no means always the case – underlying economic realities remain the same. In my article, and apologies for asking people to read it if they want my full views, I say, “The forces of authoritarianism in the parties, the state and the media are still intact”. This is important, the Clegg/Cameron Coalition promises – and I underline the gap between word and deed – a set of significantly good things. But this progress has not been earned by an organised movement, it has been delivered by a post-electoral coup. It is therefore uncertain and insecure even though it has the immense power of the British state to back it up. This state with its dark forces intact is now being governed by a Tory party that wants to win public support in a quite different way to Thatcher.

Anyone who seriously believes that Thatcherism amounts to a coherent, intelligible ideology is strongly recommended to read Simon Jenkins: Thatcher and Sons (Penguin, 2006)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/oct/07/politics1

As for all the stuff about her tax cutting agenda, the fact is that by the 1992 election, tax revenues as a percentage of national GDP were much the same as when the Conservatives were elected to government in May 1979.

It would make much better sense to note what Mrs Thatcher said about her acknowledged mentor, Nicholas Ridley:

“Free-market economics was always Nick’s passion. And he had a longer, better pedigree in that respect than most Thatcherites—or indeed I may add—than Thatcher herself. His first vote against a Conservative Government bailing out nationalised industries was in 1961. To be so right, so early on, is not to have seen the light—it is to have lit it…He would have been a superb Chancellor.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Ridley%2C_Baron_Ridley_of_Liddesdale

Remember that “monetarism”, as manifested in the Medium Term Financial Strategy, was formally abandoned in the autumn of 1985.

I think to declare the ‘ end of Thatcherism ‘ it would be useful to define what you mean by Thatcherism. I have never been convinced that there ever was a coherent economic and social policy that could accurately be described as Thatcherism. Governments respond to events and make their policy response up as they go along. Sometimes 10 mins before they go live on-air. If there was such a thing as Thatcherism, it is just an amalgam of policy responses to the unique circumstances of the 1980s.

Will the next decade be different from the last one, which was a continuation of the last one, which in turn built upon the experiences of the 1970/80s? Yes. The future British government no matter which colour will be more interventionist compared to the last 25 years. That will be a response to events because a number of conventional orthodoxies now lie in tatters in the wake of the GFC. Market solutions will still be sought where appropriate but market fundamentalism is dead. The government is not going to go back and repeat the mistakes of the past by trying to pick winners. State ownership of large swathes of industry is just not going to happen. However, more state direction where capital should go will figure more prominently than was the case for the last two decades.

Capital and exchange controls abolished during the 1980s are not coming back except in a real economic crisis.

If social conservatism is identified as a form of Thatcherism, it is dying or in retreat from every British institution. It will fight a vain rearguard defence from the pages of the Daily Mail, but we can safely say it is almost dead.

I never actually liked anyone I met who self-identified as Thatcherite, so it would be useful if Thatcherism is defined so I know if they are dead.

Matt , a Thatcherite Tory just proves my point.
The future belongs to Thatcherite trolls like Matt and Charlie 2.
Lib dems these are people you are in bed with.
Discuss !
Charlie 2 , unions constantly fight for re training. Give me an example of any union opposed to training of the workforce or it’s members.
You funking right wing doughnut.

42. Bob B

Remember that “monetarism”, as manifested in the Medium Term Financial Strategy, was formally abandoned in the autumn of 1985.

The MTFS was known in some circles as Margaret Thatcher Final Solution.

Until we overturn the Tory anti-union laws and re-nationalise everything Thatcher and Major privatised, Thatcherism will be alive and well. I suggest that Labour’s next PM make this his/her first priority.

“I suggest that Labour’s next PM make this his/her first priority.”

Still living in dreamland I see. I’m sure you said the same thing when Thatcher was in power, and you’ll be saying it till the end of days. It’s very simple: Labour doesn’t care about unions any more. You’re like battered wives who can’t stop coming back to their twat of a husband.

“Until we overturn the Tory anti-union laws and re-nationalise everything Thatcher and Major privatised, Thatcherism will be alive and well.”

That comes close to one of Simon Jenkins’s observations.

The fact is that New Labour was at least as enthusiastic about selling off public assets as the Thatcher governments in the 1980s had been and much of the industrial relations legislation was left amended by New Labour.

In those respects, it’s fair to say that New Labour absorbed and endorsed the Thatcher legacy. But I’ve not detected any inclination to rejoin the European Exchange Rate Mechanism which John Major, as Chancellor, took us into in October 1990.

I think Labour needs to start working now on that new “progressive agenda”. Here are a few tentative suggestions for inclusion taken from the previous government’s political agenda:

- Super ASBOs
- Slagging off the judiciary to make sure they know their place
- More national databases
- A bigger house-price bubble to make houses even more unaffordable
- A larger Gini coefficient for the distribution of income
- An e-university to address the skills gap
- Abolish boom ‘n’ bust

. The unions resisted technological development. The unions representing unskilled annd semi-skilled workers resisted their training so they could become craftsmen which meant they would have left their unions and entered the skilled unions.[and so on]

In reality, anaylses of unionised & non-unionised saw barely any discrepancy in relative efficency, & both improved that in the face of the horrific early 1980s recession at pretty much precisely even rates.

@ 39 “Part of the success of the Japnese cars was there high levels of reliability”

Er nothwithstanding recent events at Totota (you can have one that won’t start or one that won’t stop….) I would agree with you. To quit union bashing for a minute though, part of the post war sucess of Japanese manufacture was down to the relative weakness of traditional European company structures and management styles.

Without going into huge detail about JIT/TQM, Japanese manufacturers have an (almost) non-hierarchical structure, which rejects the traditional Manager = thinker, Worker = doer mindset which still prevails in parts of British industry.
To cut a long story short, breaking down that midset and giving the workforce ownership of what they produce potentially gives massive increases in effiiciency and reliability whilst motivating and upskilling the workforce. The end result is a higher quality product at a lower price and a skilled motivated workforce with a much leaner management structure to boot.
By contrast most british firms are still over managed, under skilled and have unrealistic target returns, making for an expensive, unreliable and generally inferior product.
There are of course other factors at work, much needed post war restructuring of industry never happened here, so pre-war ways of working prevailed until the 1980s, but the UK class system as much the unions were, and still are to some extent, part of the problem

@ 40. “So progress is impossible?”

No – “progress” (apart from scientific progress) is an illusion.

The end of Thatcherism? I’m having a laugh. Both Cameron and Orange Book-Clegg are Thatcherites. They’re neoliberals, just like Blair and Brown, but even worse.

Matt
Your analysis is correct
I would say though.
I have worked in Japan and there is a massive cultural difference and acceptance of one’s role in society.
That cannot be transferred to the UK system. As a race we are little too cynical and stroppy
You could argue that it is not neccessary because since the eighties we have become a service and retail economy.
Personally I think the John Lewis model is an excellent one to follow in those industries.
Most manufacturing is by small self employed industries and negative dynamic doesn’t exist.

@51

“progress” (apart from scientific progress) is an illusion.

Oooh how very Matrix-y. There is no spoon!

srsly tho; you reckon that every gain made in the betterment of humanity has only come about from science? And you claim to have a good grasp of history?? lulz

@ 54 I’m not explaining myself very well. Perhaps what I mean to say is that “progress” (as in social progress) is relative and scientific progress is absolute.

@ 53 Indeed, if they had been on the voting slip I would have voted for John Lewis to run the country. It’s also worth noting that most firms of lawyers and accountants are LLPs suggesting that it is the most efficient structure.

@55

Well… OK. But in some respects everything is “relative”. ie poverty, wealth, ‘good’ education, ‘good’ health. It’s all relative to current circumstances but that doesn’t make any progress in those spheres any less real for people who benefit from it.
I mean: a bloke on say £10K a year is incredibally wealthy by third-world standards but poor as chips in the UK – would you begrudge helping him via tax credits etc because it’s “relative” poverty and not “absolute” (ie he can clothe and feed himself)?

44. Nick Cohen is a tory. I said the unskilled and semi-skilled unions were against training which resulted in a member leaving their union and joining a craft one or becoming a chartered engineer and leaving the union movement all together. Consequently the unskilled ans semi-skilled unions were against upward social mobility. After all if everyone leaves the union it has no power and income. If one looks back at the history of unions, many have disappeared because they skills are no longer required.

@37 matt munro

Hopefully you are a better singer than you are political analyst (which honestly isn’t expecting much given most of your posts). Your wish list is a good enough explication of the type of things that motivate the right, as opposed to the left: an encapsulation of the witless, dry as dust, on yer bike-ism. Enough to make anyone with a conscience shudder.

The BBC, for all it’s faults, has little to learn from the Tory vandals at the door. Obviously they would much prefer Murdoch and his unholy minions to be given free reign to gut Auntie, and turn our media into a clone of Sky and Fox. Reforming the way the BBC is funded is one thing, pandering to the “disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” carpet biters is quite another.

State education hasn’t failed. Vouchers are another ideologically motivated attempt to turn back the clock to the olden days of grammar schools, by a right wing without the courage to come clean and say that’s what they actually want. Much like the chimerical sunny uplands of choice in health provision, choice in education ISN’T what people want… they want decently funded, well run schools and hospitals they don’t have to travel miles to access, and don’t need to be an actuary to analyse in their respective league tables.

“Workfare” is obviously flavour of the month, and a guaranteed topic to warm the cockles of Tebbit-ite right. Again, the problem is not that there isn’t some basis for a debate on how to avoid long term unemployment and welfare dependance, it’s the absolute assurance from the right that the solution is effectively to starve the good for nothings back into work, make them pick oakum, and perhaps re-open the workhouses…and serve ‘em all right too eh?

The EU is hardly crumbling: seems you are confusing your political wet-dreams with the cold reality of cleaning up your sticky jammies Matt. Much like the death of Mark Twain in another time, reports of the death of the Euro, or indeed the EU, are greatly exaggerated. You do realise don’t you Matt that wishing for something very hard, whilst it works in Peter Pan, doesn’t actually work when it comes to making Thatcherite dreams come true?

43
Spot-on,
I would also like to add that ‘Thatcherism’ as it is referred to, relied heavily on the economy being subsidized by privatization, and since the banking debacle, there are few who believe a free-market can deliver economic stability.

yes, you’re right. it will be a “sad” perhaps even a desperate thatcherism, and the main change will be one primarily of style, not of substance. honestly, several days ago, you posted “the walrus and the carpenter,” but you forgot to add the exegesis:

‘I like the Walrus best,’ said Alice: ‘because you see he was a LITTLE sorry for the poor oysters.’

‘He ate more than the Carpenter, though,’ said Tweedledee. ‘You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn’t count how many he took: contrariwise.’

‘That was mean!’ Alice said indignantly. ‘Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn’t eat so many as the Walrus.’

‘But he ate as many as he could get,’ said Tweedledum.

This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, ‘Well! They were BOTH very unpleasant characters.”