Latest news with #MaggieThatcher
Daily Mail
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE The harrowing truth about The Vivienne's final hours, the moment his lifeless body was found... and tragic reason star may have turned back to ketamine shortly before dying from the drug: FRED KELLY
In an explosion of sequins, tight-fitting jumpsuits and outlandish blonde wigs, The Vivienne burst onto the nation's television screens in 2019 winning the first season of hit BBC reality show RuPaul 's Drag Race UK. The cheeky Liverpudlian drag queen – whose stage name derived from his love of Vivienne Westwood clothes – instantly won over viewers with his camp wit and larger-than-life impersonations of Donald Trump, and Maggie Thatcher.
The National
27-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Thatcherism's toxic legacy lives on in Reform UK
These towns carry a rich history on their shoulders, but one of startling contrasts. The accumulation of fabulous wealth for the few on the backs of grinding labour by the many. A proud working class, but with many nowadays turning to despair and seething rage at betrayals by modern politicians. An area that suffered heavily at the hands of Maggie Thatcher's red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism 40 years ago, now in desperate need of a vision of hope, of change, of radical socialist change. The constituency is built on the Lanarkshire coalfield where the country's richest peers, the Dukes of Hamilton, stole thousands of acres of land from the people in Eddlewood, Cadzow and beyond, with the help of kings, and built unimaginable fortunes on the backs of miners hewing coal from the bowels of the earth, suffering not just starvation, and loss of limbs but frequent deaths. READ MORE: SNP figures believe Nigel Farage's Reform UK will come second in key by-election Ancient history, you might protest, but don't the brutal class exploitation and dirty methods echo down the ages? Forty years ago, Thatcher's Tory government, representing parasitic finance capitalism, deployed police to impose her industrial vandalism on the mining communities of this area. The legacy remains to this day, with savagely reduced wages as a share of national wealth; rampant job insecurity with zero-hours contracts; and the manacles of anti-trade union laws which Thatcher introduced but Labour governments have refused to repeal. That's why the SSP's call for an immediate £15-an-hour minimum wage for all – and abolition of all zero-hours contracts – has gained such resonance. Thatcher's infamous 'right to buy' council houses obliterated access to quality, affordable housing for young people and families. It transformed housing into a cash machine for slum landlords, bankers, and property speculators, instead of social provision of the basic human right to shelter. READ MORE: Why is Labour's Hamilton by-election campaign so bad? Behind the curtains of many decent-looking houses, with lovingly kept gardens, lurks fuel poverty. Pensioners, low-paid families, even middle-income workers, watching every penny as they juggle the cost of food, household energy bills and public transport. This entirely avoidable, morally repugnant poverty was created by the profiteering of big energy companies, giant supermarkets and privatised bus firms – who rip profit out of passengers through exorbitant fares, but additionally grabbed £440 million in Scottish Government subsidies last year. The SSP's advocacy of free travel for all on publicly-owned buses, trains, subways and ferries – saving the average worker £1400 a year, and combating pollution – and our call for democratic public ownership of all forms of energy, have been well received. People are visibly shocked when we explain every household could have been £1800 better off in 2022 if the profit element had been removed through nationalisation of energy. Lifelong Labour voters shake with anger at how their bills have risen three times in nine months, after Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar promised a Labour government would cut heating bills by £300. Privatisation of services initiated by Thatcher was escalated by Tony Blair's Labour government, including local schools and hospitals. Labour's infamous private finance initiative (PFI) means Hairmyres and Wishaw hospitals were built for a combined total of £168 but public funds have been plundered to the tune of £1.5 billion in repayments of PFI fees. This glut of money siphoned off to capitalist moneylenders could instead pay the salaries of 4000 nurses for 10 years. That's why the SSP have been advocating immediate cancellation of all PFI schemes, to invest the savings in hospital staff and equipment; upgrade school buildings; and cut class sizes to a maximum of 20, creating teachers' jobs. This by-election occurs against the background of escalating austerity by a Labour Government which stubbornly refuses to tackle wealth inequality, upholds the rule of the millionaire class, and thereby feeds the flames of fury which arch-Thatcherite Reform UK divert into vicious hate-filled scapegoating. To make matters worse, Starmer has reinforced the momentum of Nigel Farage by spewing out bilious Farage-like talk of 'living in an island of strangers'. The only real strangers to working-class people in Hamilton, Larkhall or Stonehouse are the gang of multimillionaires – overwhelmingly former Tories – who lead Reform UK. Theirs is an exercise in monumental political distraction. Turning the gaze of some desperate people towards even more desperate people fleeing wars and persecution, away from the real causes of their poverty, poor housing, and collapsing public services: capitalist parties who pamper the millionaires and punish the millions. With the help of the broadcast media, who refuse a platform to the SSP but for years have promoted Farage, the real arch-Thatcherite aims of Reform UK are hidden from many people who in despair are tempted to vote for them as a way of lashing out at years of betrayal by Labour and growing discontent with the SNP. READ MORE: Reform UK are a real and present danger in Scotland Thatcher is long dead but Thatcherism is alive in the form of Reform UK – and stalking the former coalfields of Lanarkshire. Former Tory Party member Farage once said: 'I'm the only politician keeping the flame of Thatcherism alive.' Reform UK MPs voted to keep zero-hours contracts and retain capitalist bosses' right to fire and rehire workers on lower wages. They want to rip up the NHS and replace it with private, profit-driven health insurance schemes, akin to that of the US, where medics don't so much feel your pulse as feel your wallet to see if you can afford treatment. They want to slash public services by £150bn a year and drastically reduce taxation of big business and the very rich – which includes the entire Reform leadership. Far from being anti-establishment, this is an outfit of and for the millionaires. Farage admitted to having claimed £2m in expenses from the European Parliament, which he proclaims not to even believe in; a multi-millionaire former stockbroker who coined in an additional £572,000 in the recent six months, on top of his £94,000 MP's salary. Hardly a man of the people. You can't defeat Farageism by imitating their poisonous policies. The SSP have confronted Reform with a battery of policies against their extreme Tory agenda of devastation. Instead of perpetuating rule and ruin by the millionaire class – as Reform, Labour and others do – the SSP stand for a massive redistribution of wealth away from the millionaires who hoard it to the millions who need it. We've advocated a 5% wealth tax on all millionaires – to raise in one year the equivalent of four years' worth of the entire Scottish budget. Even if you narrowed that policy down to the richest 10 people in Scotland – yes, 10 individuals – it would raise £1.24bn in one year for investments in housing renovation, community and youth centres, leisure facilities and other improvements to life. The SSP's by-election candidate Collette Bradley has pledged if elected she'll lodge a bill in the Scottish Parliament to immediately abolish the unfair Council Tax and replace it with the SSP's income-based Scottish Service Tax, which would mean eight out of 10 people in the constituency paying less, but would double national funds for local jobs and services from £2.7bn to £5.3bn. The money is there, but it's in the wrong – and far too few – hands. None of the parties currently in power have any intention of tackling grotesque wealth inequality by taxing the rich or pursuing democratic public ownership of all services and major industries. But that's precisely what's required to combat the boil of seething discontent from spilling over into a vote for Reform UK. It's a daunting struggle to combat the far-right, but the SSP are determined to offer hope, not despair. To champion genuine socialist change, not a continuation of rule and ruin by the millionaire class and all their multi-coloured political mouthpieces.
The National
29-04-2025
- Politics
- The National
John Swinney's far-right summit failed to talk about something key
The mission statement agreed oozes amorphous words about 'participation and openness', but nothing concrete or material by way of an action plan, despite its laudable stated aim of 'combating inequality and discrimination'. To say, as the statement does, that 'we recognise many people feel distant from politics or failed by society' is the understatement of 2025! For the mainstream politicians present to make that comment without so much as blushing shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness; they are the people in office at local, national or UK Government levels who've provoked the anger and alienation which multi-millionaire, far-right fraudsters like Nigel Farage tap into. All political forces and parties ultimately reflect material class interests. In the vast majority of parties, it's the rule and furtherance of the fortunes of the millionaire and big business class that is represented in Parliament. This was at the root of the viciously anti-working class, privatising, jobs-slaughtering Maggie Thatcher regime, enforced – as in the battle with the miners – by police thuggery. READ MORE: ICC arrest warrant requests must be kept secret, court judges order Subsequently, 13 years of Tony Blair's 'New' Labour governments continued this assault, retaining all Thatcher's repressive anti-union laws, privatising schools, hospitals and other public service projects with their private finance initiative (PFI) schemes. Then we suffered decades of Tory rule, only to be confronted by Keir Starmer's Labour Government carrying on where the Tories left off. Millions of people are heartily sick of overpaid politicians telling us to 'tighten our belts', that 'there is no alternative' to escalating and life-threatening attacks on wages, benefits, pensions, jobs and public services. As the colour of party rosettes change, but conditions only get worse, no wonder people feel 'distant from politics and failed by society'. The point is, what to do about it. The far-right taps into the well of disgust and disillusionment with the rule of not just the Tories, or even 'modern' Labour, but also the SNP, who do nothing substantial to challenge and defeat Labour's austerity with a fighting plan of resistance. But Reform UK are no friend of the working class, to put it mildly. They are backed by billionaires; four of their MPs are multi-millionaires; and behind their opportunist rhetoric lie policies that would devastate working-class people's lives. They want to drastically reduce taxes on big business and the super-rich; slash spending on public services and jobs by £150 billion a year; voted against Labour's milk-and-water improvements to workers' rights; and aim to dismantle our NHS, replacing it with private health insurance schemes for profit. Their main calling card is to divide and weaken working-class resistance to their arch-Thatcherite measures, by scapegoating immigrants; people seeking asylum from wars, starvation and climate catastrophes; and people of colour born in this country. The far-right is the enemy of working-class people, regardless of colour, creed or country of origin. (Image: PA) But to stop their growth, we first need to recognise their success relies on the utter failure of misnamed 'centre' parties to match people's basic needs in life. Instead of an assembly dominated by politicians from the very parties which create the alienated, despairing conditions that fuel the far-right's growth, we need assemblies of the working-class majority to devise a People's Charter of concrete, material demands. A People's Charter offering a vision of an entirely different Scotland, where the nation's fabulous natural, manufactured and human wealth is harnessed for the benefit of its people, not the enrichment of the profiteering capitalist and landlord minority. Let me illustrate some examples of what the organised, 600,000-strong trade union movement, community and youth organisations, and genuine socialist forces like the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), could and should wage a struggle for, cutting the feet from under the far-right fakes in the process. The average worker's wage is £11,500 less now than in 2008, prior to the bankers trashing the economy and 20 years of austerity to pay for the bankers' bailout. A guaranteed £15-an-hour minimum wage for all workers aged 16+, and pay rises to compensate for cuts, would unify and embolden hundreds of thousands into action. True, minimum wage laws are reserved to Westminster, but the Scottish Government should declare a £15-an-hour minimum 'living wage' for all 550,000 public sector workers, plus those on public sector contracts, setting a benchmark for the private sector. Labour's PFI schemes in Scotland's schools and hospitals on average cost £5 in repayment fees from the public purse to consortia of bankers, venture capitalists and other speculators for every £1 invested. A People's Charter should demand cancellation of all PFI contracts, which have cost Scottish people £14bn in fees since 2007, and this year alone costs £27m in repayments for Hairmyres hospital – depriving the local NHS of funds to instead hire 850 nurses. Scotland officially suffers a housing emergency. The Scottish Government should be pounded into building 100,000 quality council houses at affordable rent, creating jobs and apprenticeships, giving hope and renewed purpose to a generation that feels particularly divorced from politicians, prey to the false doctrines of cynical wide boys like Farage – who owns two mansions, making him a property millionaire. Why can't the Scottish Government grow a collective spine, combine with workers and communities in a mass campaign, and win back some of the billions stolen from Scotland in block grants by Westminster? Even within the devolution straitjacket, the Scottish Government could abolish the unfair, regressive Council Tax and replace it with the SSP's fully costed Scottish Service Tax, based on incomes, on people's ability to pay. That would literally double council funding from £2.7bn in Council Tax to £5.3bn from the progressive Scottish Service Tax, whereby 75% of people would pay less, but the rich cough up far, far more. That single measure would provide more than £2bn in a year for council house-building, renovation, and District Heating Schemes to cut fuel poverty. There's plenty of wealth in Scotland, but it's in the hands of far too few. Even a modest 5% wealth tax on all millionaires would have generated £260bn last year for jobs and services. That's one of the reasons the SSP candidate in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, trade union activist Collette Bradley, is standing to become an MSP living on the average Scottish worker's wage, in keeping with the SSP's core principles. When the politicians at Swinney's summit speak of people feeling distant from politics, no wonder! How can an MSP on £74,507 basic salary possibly relate to the daily conditions of ordinary people they claim to represent? When Farage not only takes his £94,000 MPs salary, but grabs a further £572,000 in six months, how can he claim to be 'anti-establishment', as he tries to seduce disgusted Labour voters? We urgently need a serious campaign for socialist measures to combat poverty, inequality, alienation, and the false gospels of Thatcherite racists who want to protect the rule of the millionaire class by dividing the working class.
