Does God hate the Tories?

[Agathon]

The Tories are reaping what they sowed. Thatcherite politics have been completely discredited in every English speaking state other than the United States. It's not just the UK: New Zealand's Conservative National Party is in the same boat. I reckon it's because:

1) Centre left parties have adopted a more market driven economic policy leaving the Conservatives with no wiggle room on this issue.

2) The attempt to legislate conservative moral values has been completely discredited in the opinion of the electorate. Such things are viewed as matters of private opinion rather than public policy.

3) Almost no one has any respect for class any more.

4) The majority of people favour a state run health care system and some government involvement in the economy. The left used to be in the extreme position of being seen to oppose all private enterprise; the right are now in the position of being seen to oppose all public spending. Hence the left are now the moderates and have accrued to themselves the considerable political capital that comes from being in this position.

6) The right can no longer count on Cold War fears or the Red Scare for votes. The "War on Terror" is in one sense an attempt to re-establish the right as credible foreign policymakers. It isn't working outside of the US. In other words the right is the party of war - they need war, or the appearance of war to have a credible stance.

7) Most people's values are mildly social democratic.

Well that's my HO.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Agathon
Thatcherite politics have been completely discredited in every English speaking state other than the United States.

A Rustproof Iron Lady
By Timothy Congdon

-- Journal of the History of Economic Thought, , Vol. 24, No. 3, September 2002, London

How will history judge former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s changes to British public policy in the 1980s? It is already clear that 21st-century commentators will be kinder than her contemporaries were. When the Conservative Party lost the general election to the Labour Party in 1997, The Independent newspaper carried the banner headline, “Everything has changed.” In fact, surprisingly little changed. Labour did not reverse Thatcher’s most distinctive reforms: privatization, reduction of trade unions’ power, and elimination of subsidies to inefficient industries. Neither did it reintroduce exchange-rate controls or the price and incomes policies her government scrapped in 1979.

Rather, the Labour government maintained existing income tax rates and endorsed Thatcher’s macroeconomic framework, wherein both monetary policy and a prudent fiscal policy were aimed at combating inflation. Astonishingly, newspaper columnists now refer to Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair as “Thatcher’s heir,” and he does not seem embarrassed by this description.

The September 2002 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought carries a set of articles on “the political economy of Margaret Thatcher.” Given the extent of acceptance by former Thatcher opponents, the papers seem curiously dated and negative in tone. Roger Backhouse, a Birmingham University economist, provides the least hostile assessment. Many British economists in the early 1980s thought both Thatcher and her monetary approach to inflation were mad, and 364 of them wrote a letter to The Times in 1981 saying as much. Backhouse is more balanced. He sees the radical post-1979 changes as an intelligible response to the policy failures and macroeconomic instability of the 1970s. He also welcomes the increasing productivity of Britain’s manufacturing sector during the 1980s.

But his discussion of monetary policy—supposedly such a crucial area of what Thatcher wrought—is too close to the conventional wisdom. It is therefore uninteresting and largely wrong. Backhouse argues that the government abandoned money supply targets because of the difficulty in hitting them. This comment is reasonable, but he is quite wrong to say that “monetary aggregates lost their significance.” As Geoffrey Howe, Thatcher’s first chancellor of the exchequer, noted in his own memoirs, the money targets were met in his last year as chancellor (1983), and inflation rates had come down as planned. Unfortunately, when Nigel Lawson (Thatcher’s second chancellor) dropped the broad money target in late 1985, money supply growth in the following year accelerated sharply. Thatcher famously insisted that she was “not for turning.” But the sad fact is that Thatcher—or, at any rate, her ministers—did make a U-turn, allowing rapid money supply growth and therefore stimulating a silly boom and causing inflation to rise to 10 percent in 1990.

The tragedy of monetary mismanagement in the late 1980s can be seen as a sequence of squabbles between Thatcher and Lawson. But it is better interpreted as the revenge of the 364—that is, a complete lack of understanding among British economists of how money supply and the economy interact. Backhouse also misses this connection.

In another article, Joel Krieger, a Wellesley College political scientist, looks at Thatcherism from a sociological standpoint. Krieger seems nostalgic for the representation of trade union and senior business people in the high-level corporatist bargaining seen in Britain in the 1970s. Perhaps he thinks that the centralized determination of prices and incomes is the best way to bring down inflation. Someone needs to tell him that no one of any political significance in Britain today—including Blair—shares this nostalgia. For all the problems of the 1980s, those years proved Thatcher was right on one point. Monetary policy, not incomes policy, is the right way to control inflation.

http://foreignpolicy.com/issue_janfeb_2003/gns2.html#brits

[Agathon]

Thank you for proving my point Dinodoc.

The Labour party has been slightly different - they have adopted market policies with a kinder social face: witness the infusion of cash into the NHS. Moreover, privatisation for its own sake (which is the perceived Thatcherite position) has been discredited. Who would have thought that Britons would have ever been nostalgic for British Rail? The centre left parties (like New Zealand's Labour Party) have taken over the mantle of principled pragmatism that the Tories thought was their own.

The Tory party represents a similar economic policy (there aren't radical differences), but a completely outmoded set of social values (such as crypto-fascist nationalism).

i.e. points 1 thru 3.

[DinoDoc]

My point is that Thatcherite positions can hardly be considered to have been discredited when the Labour Party has made no real moves to roll them back the most distinctive of them.

[spartak]

I must say that God may loath the Tories, but not as much as I do

[MRT144]

if you claim tory do you get a free pair of union jack boxers agathon?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
My point is that Thatcherite positions can hardly be considered to have been discredited when the Labour Party has made no real moves to roll them back the most distinctive of them.

The Thatcherite position is the extreme market utopianism of statements such as "there is no such thing as society" and the perceived notion that everything must be privatised. That has been discredited in the eyes of the average British voter; just as it has in the eyes of the average New Zealand voter.

The Labour party does not subscribe to a fundamentally different economic theory (though I think they should in some respects) but they have different goals. One can have the same notion of how an economy works and what must be done without committing oneself to the same hard right social policy of the Thatcher years (again witness the significant infusions into the NHS - my uncle is an administrator for the NHS - quite high up in fact; and he is quite impressed. The rail disaster is well documented and Thatcherite social policy, ot the lack of it, has been a complete disaster.

One does not have to be a hard capitalist to recognise the efficiency gains that markets can bring in some areas - after all, as Che Guevara once said, "Markets are a weapon to increase production."

In short you could describe the Labour position as "markets without individualist fundamentalism and intervention when necessary". That seems to be the dominant political view these days - one could not describe this fairly as "Thatcherism".

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MRT144
if you claim tory do you get a free pair of union jack boxers agathon?

I suppose so, along with a stiff upper lip and a predilection for sado-masochistic sex acts. American conservatives, whatever else one might think of them, tend not to be closet perverts. Must be the British public school system.

BTW - was anyone as amused as me at the revelation of John Major as Edwina Currie's demon lover?

[Provost Harrison]

Nothing surprises me with Tories...look at Jeffery Archer and say no more

[Imran Siddiqui]

Thatcherite politics have been completely discredited in every English speaking state other than the United States.

Not true. New Labor under Blair is simply 'Thatcherism with a kinder face'.

Shi is totally correct, Labor hasn't rolled back any major Thatcher policy. To say that Thatcherism is just privatization of everything is to be ignorant of the status of Britain in 1979 and in 1997. In 1979, privatization was REQUIRED to save Britain. In 1997, everything was different.

To say Thatcher is discredited when the current government is basically Thatcherist is ludicrous.

[Dauphin]

I don't see how Labour could nationalise all that the Tories privatised even if they wanted to. It would be too expensive and annoy a lot of people - it would lose them the next election. To say that they didn't do it means they agree with Thatcher is a stretch.

If you want to look at how Labour is Thatcherist you have to look at what they have done, not what they have left alone. Striking Clause 4 off their manifesto, and not budging on the Fire Service strikes is a better example of their nature.

[molly bloom]

Does anyone entertain sexual fantasies about Anne Widdecombe? I mean, given her conversion to Roman Catholicism, I thought perhaps the odd 'Poly poster might conceive of her in a rubber backless nun's outfit, perhaps...

Any party that attempts to legislate morality for the British public is on a (Miss Whiplash) hiding to nothing. Especially one with as many closet cases, nanny's boys and adulterers as the Tory party.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by molly bloom
Does anyone entertain sexual fantasies about Anne Widdecombe? I mean, given her conversion to Roman Catholicism, I thought perhaps the odd 'Poly poster might conceive of her in a rubber backless nun's outfit, perhaps...

I will need therapy after that mental image.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Big Crunch


I will need therapy after that mental image.

Lucky for you I left out the strap on and the cream cakes!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Thatcherite politics have been completely discredited in every English speaking state other than the United States.

Not true. New Labor under Blair is simply 'Thatcherism with a kinder face'.

Shi is totally correct, Labor hasn't rolled back any major Thatcher policy. To say that Thatcherism is just privatization of everything is to be ignorant of the status of Britain in 1979 and in 1997. In 1979, privatization was REQUIRED to save Britain. In 1997, everything was different.

To say Thatcher is discredited when the current government is basically Thatcherist is ludicrous.

No it isn't. There is a real difference between Labour and Thatcher, which I've outlined in previous posts. Thatcher represents an extreme and ideological version of Conservatism. The Labour government represents a pragmatic acceptance of some Thatcherite principles. It does have a "kinder face" as you put it, but that represents a real difference rather than the cosmetic one you imply.

Besides, if the UK adopted proportional representation as New Zealand has, the Labour party would have to move to the left, just as it has in New Zealand. The Westminster system is an affront to democracy.