It Is the Spirit of Iron not the Lady's Leanings that Impress

It must be Liberal Democrat Spring Conference, Nick Clegg has been talking about Thatcher. Last year ahead of Harrogate he said:

"When the right won out, the reality was brutal. I remember very distinctly this sense that we were being told we should all place money above morality; put profit ahead of people; that we shouldn't worry about selling out. Because, at the end of the day, there was no such thing as society. But I looked around me and thought: no, there has to be more to life than this. There is more to us than this. Justice, fairness, community. We weren't ready to give in to that soulless, unforgiving Britain. That dog-eat-dog, get-rich-quick, look-after-number-one Britain. We didn't want to live in Thatcher's Britain.

"The false idols of trickle-down economics worshipped by Tories and New Labour alike have turned to dust."

So turn to this year and what is this in the Spectator?

Age, he claims, has taught him the point of Lady Thatcher. And, indeed, he now seems to see her as something of an inspiration. ‘I’m 43 now. I was at university at the height of the Thatcher revolution and I recognise now something I did not at the time: that her victory over a vested interest, the trade unions, was immensely significant. I don’t want to be churlish: that was an immensely important visceral battle for how Britain is governed.

But hang on, some including the right leaning press have claimed this is in praise of all things Thatcherism but read on, Nick tells you that while in the 80s the vested interest was the Unions in the noughties it is something else.

"And what has now happened to the British economy? It has gone belly-up because, once again, we have allowed a vested interest to run riot." He is talking, of course, about the banks. "They represent a vested interest. This is what I sometimes don’t understand about the Cameron-Osborne act. A real liberal believes in genuine competition, a genuine level playing field and he is unremittingly hostile to vested interests." As Thatcher was to Scargill, so Mr Clegg intends to be to the banks. "What I find so striking is that the spirit — dare I say it — of the battle against the dominance of one vested interest, the trade unions, is exactly the same spirit we need now."

So it is not a return to Thatcherism, what it is is an admiration of the spirit that fought the vested interests to look out for the majority of the people and so it is again. I could not see Thatcher, or any of her successors taking on the banks, indeed we've seen how timid some of them have been in recent years.

And before Labour misinterpret and start to spin, let us not forget who was one of the first visitors to a Brown Number 10.

Change We Can't Believe In

So David Cameron has gone with the slogan "Year for Change" the day after The Times exposed just how little change [pdf link] there was in his list of candidates.

Yesterday it was revealed that of 167 candidates questioned by The Times 83 gave their idea of a political hero, 32 of which chose Margaret Thatcher. Indeed Mo Mowlam with 4 was double the number who had suggested the new 'change' hero of the party David Cameron was their hero. Of course the Cameron/Osborne urge to cut the deficit quickly and bugger the consequences to the workers is right up there with Thatcherite thinking at the start of her time of 'change'.

There was also a Populus poll of 36 sitting MPs and 34 prospective candidates, which did show that the new guard may have some hope, but the problem is that they will be backbenchers to the sitting MPs filling the cabinet spots if they form a Government. 16% of the MPs believed multiculturalism was a good thing whereas 52% of the PPCs did. That is better but only over half, and therefore hardly a sign of total change for our multicultural Britain. On gay couples having equal rights there was 35% of the sitting MPs in favour to 65% of the PPCs. However, on cllimate change it was the sitting MPs who were more in line with public opinion 27% of them believed it was man-made only 9% of the potential new members.

So the new intake will be less opposed to multiculturalism (but still the majority will think it isn't all good), less homophobic, but bigger climate change deniers than the Tories currently are.

There is change but not the seismic shift that Cameron tells us has happened. It's also hardly change that many should be believing in

Is This a Progressive Party?

The Conservatives seem to think that a few key placed, if misused, words can help the branding of their party. They have been using the words 'clean' and 'honest' in the Norwich North by election then they were far from transparent but successful. So they are repeating the mantra in Glasgow North East.

They are also attempting to use the word 'progressive' to describe their past, present and future. Though interestingly seeing as the Lib Dems don't do well in polling to come equal top of the parties with the Tories in one poll on progressiveness slightly above out voting intention level, with them well down is a telling sign.

Heck there is even a piece in today's Torygraph by Antony Sheldon who has an upcoming book called Trust which tries to highlight Cameron's progressive theme. He opens by saying that Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli, the Marquis of Salisbury, Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher are rare in Conservative history in being prime ministers who changed their party and the direction of the country. But what was the direction of their country at the times that they were trying to change.

Disreali was up against Gladstone and his reform agenda. Baldwin may well have introduced votes for women but called his first election to gain a mandate for a protectionist pact, failing to gain a majority. Of course Churchill was a great war leader but post war was voted out for not having the vision to help the people recover, and then in opposition opposed the establishment of the NHS, something that still causes division in Tory ranks just last week. As for Thatcher she was hardly the great social reformer, her reign from milk snatcher, to unfair taxation, supporting the apartheid regime, section 28, suppression of rights to protest.

One telling quote is this:

"Thatcher had been radical on economic reform and [David Cameron] was going to be equally modernising on social reform."

See the above, think and also watch the below. Is being as radical as Thatcher was on economic reform necessarily going to be a good thing for social reform? I for one dread to think what social inequality that can bring after the economic inequality of Thatcher's 'steal from the poor give to the rich' Dooh Nobir* strategy.



*For anyone not catching that it is Robin Hood in reverse.