Another day, another British political wannabe making remarks about Margaret Thatcher that you can only file under: “Did you ever meet Thatcher? Fine, most of us did not meet her, but did you ever meet anyone who was alive under Thatcher?”
To Liz Truss and free market fundamentalists everywhere, channelling Thatcher means forging ahead against all expertise, making dumb and predictably immiserating decisions, then turning round when things go wrong and saying that it is everybody else’s fault that you couldn’t vandalise hard enough.
On no account should you mistake this for approval, but Thatcher wasn’t anything like that. One of the many infuriating things about her was that the consequences of her most radical decisions landed long after they had been made. She sold off council flats in the 1980s, and it would be another 30 years before we would realise that none had been built since and 40% of housing stock was now in the hands of private landlords. In 1979, we all owned our shared utilities and 7% of us owned shares. Today, 8% of us own shares, the rest own nothing, everything is more expensive and the waterways are full of raw sewage. » | Zoe Williams | Monday, December 4, 2023
Oh God! Can't these people let Margaret Thatcher rest in peace? The Tories behave as though they had a mother complex. They just can't let Mutti go! Now the Labour Party is joining in under the leadership of Keir Starmer. Have these people got no original thoughts on how to create an entrepreneurial economy? If Keir Starmer isn't careful, it will be a case of 'the same horse, different jockey' if and when he takes over the reins of power.
Fact is, the last thing this country needs is more Thatcherism! Yes, she was a good leader. A damn good leader, in fact. But Thatcher was no economist. By training, she was an industrial chemist and lawyer. Any economic pearls of wisdom came from her adivisers and from the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and the US economist from the neoclassical Chicago School of economics, Milton Friedman. Both Hayek and Friedman, needless to say, were extremely right-wing. Thatcher's policies have led to the extreme wealth gap between the über-rich in this county and the extremely poor. So do we really need more of that? Do we need more Thatcherite policies to exacerbate the wealth inequalities that plague our nation today? I would say definitely not.
There is absolutely no doubt that Margaret Thatcher did some very good things for the UK and the UK economy. But one must also say that Thatcher was of her day. Now, we have very different economic problems to solve. We therefore need to move on, and let Margaret Thatcher rest in peace. It also behoves the Tories (and Starmer) to grow up! – © Mark Alexander
