The “equally dead and buried Thatcherite era”? Oh dear.
It is quite correct, of course, to remark that Thatcher has been out of power for over thirty years and that the country is an entirely different place now. This needs stating more often than you might think, usually because some idiot leftie has just tried to claim that the modern housing crisis as Thatcher’s fault or whatever.
But there is one principle from the Thatcher years which will always be relevant no matter how unfashionable it may be, and it’s that there is no such thing as government money: there is only the taxpayer’s money. It is very unfashionable in these days of government bloatocracy to focus upon this, but there is no escaping the consequences of ignoring such a priority.
And there is a very simple way to consign this supposedly Thatcherite concern to the past, and that’s for a modern government to actually take up the principle and run the sort of tight ship that recognises that the point of the taxpayer and the private enterprise is not merely to be there to fund the State, which is pretty obviously what many public sector apparatchiks believe.
There is no way around this principle, and the reason Thatcherism isn’t dead yet is that no government has yet emerged that is honest enough to recognise the principle in question and to take it up and to rebrand it as its own. That’s how Thatcherism gets dead and buried, and it remains alive and kicking until we all get real about this.
Honestly these Red Tories toasting the death of Thatcherism seem to tend millenial and callow – or old hacks who should know better.
I guess when the UK is forced to go with a begging bowl to the IMF to stave off a bond crisis because of the profiligacy of these policies they will have their coming of age momemt.
Any politician that says they want to double down on Thatcherite policies will be finished before they started. The reforms she began (and Blair and Cameron continued) have left wages stagnant for 30 years, while house prices have risen out of reach of an ever increasing number of young families. It has given rise to vast inequality, gutted our public infrastructure, caused productivity to stall and destroyed entire towns with little plan on how to replace the jobs she destroyed, simply holding on to a naive belief that “the market” will fix everything.
You left out Brown, understandably. Blair got a wide range of people to vote for him because he promised to keep a balanced budget in his first term. He opened the purse strings in his second term. Then he handed over to Brown who squandered the rest.
Matt M
2 years ago
It’ll be Con +5% in the polls by February. Just like last Christmas, Labour are ahead during a Covid peak with the public fearful of another lockdown.
Pretty soon cases will plummet as per South Africa and Boris will say that Labour wanted to lock us down but his bravery and the government’s world-beating booster roll out has spared us.
To believe a story about a few civil servants having an illicit drink in No 10 is going to usher in a new government is deranged. It will have no more long term resonance than Dom Cummings’ road trip or Matt Hancock’s extra-marital activities.
Harry Child
2 years ago
I realise this was written in the dead period between Christmas & New Year but don’t churnalists { the Guardian name for journalists) have memories of opinion polls that put Labour and the Tories neck & neck before the last election. Don’t they remember that all Governments lose support mid term when it is easy for the public to express their disappointments without having to face the consequences of a General Election.
andrew harman
2 years ago
These historical parallels are really rather silly. The way Labour appeared in 1963-4 and how they appear now are entirely different entities.
Also polls are of little value at the best of times. At this stage of a parliament, they are virtually meaningless.
Charles Lewis
2 years ago
For me, Truss’ great virtue is that she is anti-woke — as simple as that. She will defend us, our children and our womenfok from the multiple horros of critical race and gender theory. Boris won’t –not with his lovely lady whispering into his earhole. Will Sunak? I don’t know. Gove? probably not. And Truss is, I think, tough, like Thatcher. Am I right or am I right?
Who knows?
Until she makes some real statements about her beliefs she is just as flimsy as the rest.
William MacDougall
2 years ago
Too early to rely on such polls. Most ordinary voters haven’t heard of Truss, so of course she doesn’t appear strongly, and they’ve barely registered the inflation caused by Sunak’s spendthrift policies, so his score is over rated. As for the rest, the most obvious throw back is to Tony Blair. A principled conservative is far more likely to appeal than yet another muddled heir to Blair.
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
I’m not a Truss fan, but Sunak is Osborne MkII. Can the Tories not do better? They should perhaps consider missing a generation, and pick from the Red Wall intake instead – someone along the lines of Ben Houchen – they would have to wait a bit obviously.
Truss’ poor showing represents the fact that she is unknown to the general public. If she has two years as PM, she will be familiar to the public and they will make their judgement. As for Sunak, his popularity is based on him having thrown money around like confetti. Life for him will be more difficult in the next two years.
Nick Wright
2 years ago
What we don’t need is another anti-Brexit Lib Dem turned “Conservative” masquerading as a Thatcherite. We’ve seen the effects of having leaders pretending to have principles and it’s not good for the country. I would vote for neither Comrade Sunak nor Turncoat Truss and don’t know of anyone who might, so I strongly suspect we’ll have a Lib-Lab coalition next time out.
Rob Britton
2 years ago
I think a good dose of Thatcherism is exactly what this country needs after two years of having to endure this lackadaisical incumbent in charge. Historical parallels can be taken a bit too literally. Truss, like Douglas-Home, would be the fourth successive Conservative to take over during a long stint of Tory rule, but a more accurate comparison could be John Major who was talked of as the new Douglas-Home before going on to unexpectedly defeat an unimpressive Labour leader (a bit like Starmer is today) during the General Election to follow, albeit with a much reduced majority.
Martin Smith
2 years ago
Early in her leadership MrsT was known, unaffectionately, as the Leaderene. Things can change.
After her leadership she was known by names much worse than that, also unaffectionately
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
2 years ago
Far more like the new Theresa May I would say.
DAVID MILLER
2 years ago
I’m sure Ms Truss has many attributes and she is to be applauded for her achievements in securing Post-Brexit Trade deals but she is not the one to lead the Tories if – a big IF – Boris Johnson goes.
Unlike Johnson, and Blair, Thatcher and Churchill before her, she lacks that indefinable quality – Charisma – that they all had and which is essential to being a great leader. That said, I can think of nobody in the Conservative Party – apart from Johnson – who has his Charisma.(Or in Labour).
Mike Buttolph
2 years ago
Is it significant that the guardian poll does not show what happens when there is any election, but what would happen if the government calls an election when the Conservatives are 7 points behind Labour?
The “equally dead and buried Thatcherite era”? Oh dear.
It is quite correct, of course, to remark that Thatcher has been out of power for over thirty years and that the country is an entirely different place now. This needs stating more often than you might think, usually because some idiot leftie has just tried to claim that the modern housing crisis as Thatcher’s fault or whatever.
But there is one principle from the Thatcher years which will always be relevant no matter how unfashionable it may be, and it’s that there is no such thing as government money: there is only the taxpayer’s money. It is very unfashionable in these days of government bloatocracy to focus upon this, but there is no escaping the consequences of ignoring such a priority.
And there is a very simple way to consign this supposedly Thatcherite concern to the past, and that’s for a modern government to actually take up the principle and run the sort of tight ship that recognises that the point of the taxpayer and the private enterprise is not merely to be there to fund the State, which is pretty obviously what many public sector apparatchiks believe.
There is no way around this principle, and the reason Thatcherism isn’t dead yet is that no government has yet emerged that is honest enough to recognise the principle in question and to take it up and to rebrand it as its own. That’s how Thatcherism gets dead and buried, and it remains alive and kicking until we all get real about this.
Honestly these Red Tories toasting the death of Thatcherism seem to tend millenial and callow – or old hacks who should know better.
I guess when the UK is forced to go with a begging bowl to the IMF to stave off a bond crisis because of the profiligacy of these policies they will have their coming of age momemt.
Any politician that says they want to double down on Thatcherite policies will be finished before they started. The reforms she began (and Blair and Cameron continued) have left wages stagnant for 30 years, while house prices have risen out of reach of an ever increasing number of young families. It has given rise to vast inequality, gutted our public infrastructure, caused productivity to stall and destroyed entire towns with little plan on how to replace the jobs she destroyed, simply holding on to a naive belief that “the market” will fix everything.
You left out Brown, understandably. Blair got a wide range of people to vote for him because he promised to keep a balanced budget in his first term. He opened the purse strings in his second term. Then he handed over to Brown who squandered the rest.
It’ll be Con +5% in the polls by February. Just like last Christmas, Labour are ahead during a Covid peak with the public fearful of another lockdown.
Pretty soon cases will plummet as per South Africa and Boris will say that Labour wanted to lock us down but his bravery and the government’s world-beating booster roll out has spared us.
To believe a story about a few civil servants having an illicit drink in No 10 is going to usher in a new government is deranged. It will have no more long term resonance than Dom Cummings’ road trip or Matt Hancock’s extra-marital activities.
I realise this was written in the dead period between Christmas & New Year but don’t churnalists { the Guardian name for journalists) have memories of opinion polls that put Labour and the Tories neck & neck before the last election. Don’t they remember that all Governments lose support mid term when it is easy for the public to express their disappointments without having to face the consequences of a General Election.
These historical parallels are really rather silly. The way Labour appeared in 1963-4 and how they appear now are entirely different entities.
Also polls are of little value at the best of times. At this stage of a parliament, they are virtually meaningless.
For me, Truss’ great virtue is that she is anti-woke — as simple as that. She will defend us, our children and our womenfok from the multiple horros of critical race and gender theory. Boris won’t –not with his lovely lady whispering into his earhole. Will Sunak? I don’t know. Gove? probably not. And Truss is, I think, tough, like Thatcher. Am I right or am I right?
Who knows?
Until she makes some real statements about her beliefs she is just as flimsy as the rest.
Too early to rely on such polls. Most ordinary voters haven’t heard of Truss, so of course she doesn’t appear strongly, and they’ve barely registered the inflation caused by Sunak’s spendthrift policies, so his score is over rated. As for the rest, the most obvious throw back is to Tony Blair. A principled conservative is far more likely to appeal than yet another muddled heir to Blair.
I’m not a Truss fan, but Sunak is Osborne MkII. Can the Tories not do better? They should perhaps consider missing a generation, and pick from the Red Wall intake instead – someone along the lines of Ben Houchen – they would have to wait a bit obviously.
Maybe Miriam Cates?
Truss’ poor showing represents the fact that she is unknown to the general public. If she has two years as PM, she will be familiar to the public and they will make their judgement. As for Sunak, his popularity is based on him having thrown money around like confetti. Life for him will be more difficult in the next two years.
What we don’t need is another anti-Brexit Lib Dem turned “Conservative” masquerading as a Thatcherite. We’ve seen the effects of having leaders pretending to have principles and it’s not good for the country. I would vote for neither Comrade Sunak nor Turncoat Truss and don’t know of anyone who might, so I strongly suspect we’ll have a Lib-Lab coalition next time out.
I think a good dose of Thatcherism is exactly what this country needs after two years of having to endure this lackadaisical incumbent in charge. Historical parallels can be taken a bit too literally. Truss, like Douglas-Home, would be the fourth successive Conservative to take over during a long stint of Tory rule, but a more accurate comparison could be John Major who was talked of as the new Douglas-Home before going on to unexpectedly defeat an unimpressive Labour leader (a bit like Starmer is today) during the General Election to follow, albeit with a much reduced majority.
Early in her leadership MrsT was known, unaffectionately, as the Leaderene. Things can change.
After her leadership she was known by names much worse than that, also unaffectionately
Far more like the new Theresa May I would say.
I’m sure Ms Truss has many attributes and she is to be applauded for her achievements in securing Post-Brexit Trade deals but she is not the one to lead the Tories if – a big IF – Boris Johnson goes.
Unlike Johnson, and Blair, Thatcher and Churchill before her, she lacks that indefinable quality – Charisma – that they all had and which is essential to being a great leader. That said, I can think of nobody in the Conservative Party – apart from Johnson – who has his Charisma.(Or in Labour).
Is it significant that the guardian poll does not show what happens when there is any election, but what would happen if the government calls an election when the Conservatives are 7 points behind Labour?