Latest news with #Thatcherite
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Politics
- Scotsman
How Keir Starmer is sticking to Margaret Thatcher's flawed ideology that only helps wealthy elite
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... It was an ordinary 1970s' day, in the Students' Representative Council office in St Andrews, when I first encountered the emerging ideology of Thatcherite neoliberalism, in all its questionable glory. It appeared in the form of a pale youth from Arbroath wearing an undergraduate red gown – a garment which itself amounted to a political statement, in an age when regulation student gear involved bell-bottomed jeans, tank tops and duffel coats. Michael Forsyth – for it was he, now Baron Forsyth of Drumlean – began to ask me searching questions, in my capacity as SRC treasurer, about what the council's officers were up to, with the modest amount of public money we received; and although I was able to provide him with answers, I remember being slightly shocked by his apparent assumption that we were all up to no good, making expensive rail trips to London for sheer pleasure, rather than for tedious National Union of Student meetings, or some soggy and rainswept demonstration. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Over the next few months, I met a few more of the group of Tories to which the young Mr Forsyth seemed to belong; and I soon began to recognise, if never fully to understand, their profound and mocking hostility to the postwar settlement in which we had all grown up, with its emphasis on a new international order based on human rights and equality, its generous state provision in some areas including higher education, and its assumption that some areas of the nation's life and economy were sacrosanct public goods, to be kept free of commercial motives and pressures. Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit waves to the crowds from Conservative Central Office after the Conservatives won the 1987 general election (Picture: Rebecca Naden) | PA A lavishly funded cause From the outset, it seemed clear to me that their politics was based on the demonstrably false assumption that human beings are motivated almost entirely by individualistic self-interest, that they value nothing unless they have personally paid for it, and that all the more altruistic, convivial, collaborative and creative aspects of humanity should therefore be sidelined, in constructing political and economic systems. Yet within a few years, these young proto-Thatcherites and their disruptive ideas – badged as radical, but often simply reactionary – had taken control of the Conservative party, and then of the UK Government. Their strength, of course, lay not in the quality of their thinking, but in the popularity of their ideas about deregulation and the rolling back of the state with those who already had wealth, and wanted to be free to make more. Their cause was therefore lavishly funded from the outset; and their greatest success – as Margaret Thatcher herself pointed out – was not their triumph over more moderate forms of Conservatism, but their huge impact on the politics of the Labour party, which – under Tony Blair and since – simply absorbed many of their ideas, tropes and values. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad So fast-forward, if you will, to the world this ideology has created for us, and which we inhabit today; a world not only destabilised at global level by a growing culture of contempt towards the universal values on which the postwar generation tried to found a rule-based international order, but apparently trapped, at UK level, in a Groundhog Day of ideological attachment to a Thatcherite revolution which, it is now widely acknowledged, did not fundamentally revive the UK economy, but instead profoundly weakened it. Labour's performative cruelty This is a UK, after all, in which Labour politicians still apparently think it clever, as a badge of political strength and economic wisdom, to stage acts of performative cruelty against some of the weakest in society. It's a country crippled by chronic under-investment in its people and infrastructure, where politicians both Labour and Tory still prate about reducing public spending, and avoiding taxes on ever-increasing accumulations of wealth. And it's a society surrounded and weighed down by the wreckage of a whole raft of failed privatisations of public utilities – energy, railways, England's water – where we still, in defiance of all evidence, see further involvement of private health care companies constantly touted as the way forward for the NHS. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad We are living, in other words, in an age of almost unique ideological stalemate, when the consensus of the last four decades and more has clearly failed, socially, environmentally, and in terms of global security; but where all other political ideologies have been so successfully marginalised that we have nowhere else to turn – except, of course, to the professional hate-mongers of the far-right, always ready to supply malign and practically useless myths of 'belonging', to replace more progressive and effective forms of solidarity. At the height of the Industrial Revolution, and again after the Depression of the 1930s, it was the power of organised labour, and its emergent political wing in the Labour party and the US Democrats, that eventually provided a progressive counter-force in society, demanding a more just and sustainable future. Green-democratic revolution Today, though, the ideological chaos and evident confusion of the Starmer government suggests that that powerful progressive alliance no longer exists in any meaningful form; and that any positive moves the UK Government makes, in terms of workers' rights or public spending, may well be undermined by their lack of of any new macroeconomic strategy, and their weirdly uncritical addiction to the idea of 'growth', at any price.
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Rachel Reeves is hoping deregulation will save the economy. We know how that ends
Rachel Reeves was in full Iron Lady mode when she delivered her Mansion House speech to the City's finest this week. Regulation was acting like 'a boot on the neck' of business, choking off enterprise and innovation. Cutting red tape would have a 'ripple effect' on the whole economy. Regulators should not give way to the temptation of 'excessive caution' but instead boldly regulate for growth. It could have been any Tory chancellor since Nigel Lawson speaking. If Reeves seriously believes this stuff she is heading for a rude awakening. Chancellors don't need a crystal ball to tell them where financial deregulation leads; they can read the many books detailing what happened last time this was tried. The global financial crisis of 2008 came about because policymakers bowed to the pressure from big finance to sweep away 'burdensome' regulations, pledging that more funds could be channelled into productive investment as a consequence. Instead of providing backing for startup businesses, easy money led to ever more reckless speculation and a giant credit bubble. The inevitable crash led to a deep recession, the bailout of the banks and – in a textbook example of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted – a tightening of regulations. By that point it was clear the Thatcherite experiment had failed. Britain's manufacturing sector struggled while finance became an end in itself, abandoning what should have been its prime function: providing long-term capital for businesses. In their haste to liberate the economy, Thatcher and her supporters had ignored the warning delivered by Keynes in the 1930s. 'Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise,' Keynes said. 'But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation.' It is possible that Reeves is softening up the City with some deregulation now before walloping its high rollers with higher taxes on wealth in the autumn budget. If so, she could justifiably argue that the better-off were the main beneficiaries of rising share and house prices as a result of the £900bn pumped into the economy by the Bank of England through its money creation programme. The FTSE 100 rose above 9,000 points for the first time this week. But while it would be nice to think the Mansion House speech was part of a cunning plan to squeeze the rich, it doesn't feel that way. A more likely explanation for her deregulatory zeal is that the chancellor fears the economy is becoming stuck in a doom loop and in those circumstances any growth is better than no growth. Reeves is right to be worried because the economy is not in a good place. Activity as measured by gross domestic product contracted in both April and May, while inflation picked up to 3.6% in June. The increase in employers' national insurance contributions has made businesses reluctant to hire and the public finances are in a bad state. Borrowing is high and the U-turns on the winter fuel allowance and welfare payments, coupled with weak growth, mean Reeves is on course to break her self-imposed fiscal rule. To avoid doing so will require tax increases – and over the next few months there will be endless speculation as to how much will be raised and who is going to pay it. This is a rerun of last year, when the prospect of higher taxes hit both business and consumer confidence, slowing the economy in the process. There is an obvious risk that higher taxes stall the economy, adding to pressure for further austerity measures. Hence the doom loop. Borrowing more so that tax increases can be avoided might sound attractive but is fraught with risk. The bond markets have been keeping a close eye on the UK ever since Liz Truss's disastrous premiership three years ago, and if Reeves did decide to break her fiscal rules the government would almost certainly end up paying more – and possibly a lot more – in debt interest. Historically, Labour governments have been at their most vulnerable to a financial crisis in their second and third years. So, it's not hard to see why stronger growth is a more attractive option for the chancellor and there are ways of getting it. For a start, the Bank of England needs to sharpen up its act. With the economy on the brink of recession, the Bank's monetary policy committee should be cutting borrowing costs by more than 0.25 percentage points each quarter. Threadneedle Street is also making life more difficult for Reeves by gradually selling back the bonds it bought under its quantitative easing programme in the 2010s and early 2020s. This is leading to lower bond prices and higher government debt interest costs than would otherwise be the case. This process – known as quantitative tightening (QT) – should be halted. It is also absurd for the government to be proposing cuts in welfare while the commercial banks are being paid interest at 4.25% on their risk-free reserves being held at the Bank of England. In 2023, NatWest, Barclays, Lloyds and Santander received more than £9bn between them – a rise of 135% on the previous year. There are far better uses for this money. Reeves could order the Bank to halt QT and she could stop the payouts to the commercial banks. Judging by her Mansion House speech she would rather rely on the financial sector to dig her out of a hole. Good luck with that, chancellor. Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist
Spectator
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
There'll never be another Norman Tebbit
The death of Norman Tebbit at the great age of 94 marks a real ending of an era. They simply don't make politicians like Lord Tebbit any more: caustic, high principled, Tebbit was a fighter rather than a quitter. The modern day Conservative party would be a very different outfit if it had a man like Tebbit in charge. His death is a painful reminder of what the party he was once chairman of has lost. Tebbit revelled in the insult bestowed on him by Labour leader Michael Foot as a 'semi-house trained polecat' Like Nigel Farage, who in many ways is his political successor, Tebbit was an unashamed right winger. He came from a working-class milieu and had a career as an airline pilot and leader of the pilots' Trade Union Balpa, before entering politics. He was MP for an Essex seat, Chingford, and revelled in the insult bestowed on him by Labour leader Michael Foot as a 'semi-house trained polecat' – a backhanded tribute to Tebbit's brutal Parliamentary harrying of Labour's failing governments in the 1970s. In many ways Tebbit epitomised the right-wing attitudes exemplified by 'Essex man': patriotic, hostile to mass immigration, opposed to strikes and trade union militancy, and very hardline on crime and punishment. He took no prisoners politically and was appropriately portrayed as a leather jacketed bovver boy in the TV satire show Spitting Image. Tebbit was the leading Thatcherite in Mrs Thatcher's cabinet, and as employment secretary in her first term was her chief ideological ally in her battles with the Tory 'wets' who opposed her radical policies. In his most famous speech in that time he attacked rioters, and advised them to get on their bikes and look for work like his own father had done in the 1930s. But Tebbit's political career received a brutal blow in 1984 when the IRA bombed the Grand Hotel in Brighton during the Tory party conference. Tebbit was rescued after being buried under rubble for hours, but he was severely injured and never free from pain thereafter. His wife, Margaret, was permanently paralysed. Although Tebbit remained a frontline minister and played a prominent part in Thatcher's last election victory in 1987, he retired from active politics in 1992 to care for his wife, and drew much sympathy for his tireless selflessness in looking after her. Iron entered his soul after the Brighton bombing, and understandably he was a fierce and unyielding enemy of appeasing terrorism in Ireland and elsewhere. A Eurosceptic, Tebbit was a Brexiteer, but privately was a critic of liberal Tories like David Cameron and Boris Johnson whom he felt had betrayed Mrs Thatcher's legacy. A hard man in public but with a privately tender side, Tebbit was like a fish out of water in the wet world of the 21st century Conservative party.
Spectator
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Norman Tebbit: Thatcherite icon
Norman Tebbit, the longtime keeper of the Thatcherite flame, has died at the age of 94. His career in public life spanned more than 50 years, from his election to the Epping constituency in 1970 to his retirement from the House of Lords in 2022. A Monday Club member and ardent right winger, he might have been destined to spend his career in relative backbench obscurity. But the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1975 proved to be the making of his political career. Tebbit proved his mettle to the Iron Lady in the trade union battles of the 1970s. His criticisms of the closed shop – whereby members of any profession had to join a union – prompted Michael Foot on one occasion in 1978 to brand him a 'semi-house-trained polecat', an epithet he wore with pride. After the Tory triumph in May 1979, Thatcher, unsurprisingly, handed Tebbit the brief of Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Trade. Two years later came the call to join the cabinet. Thatcher had tired of the doveish attitude of Jim Prior, her Employment Secretary, towards curbing trade union power. She replaced him with Tebbit, heralding a decisive shift to a tougher approach. His 1982 Employment Act restricted the closed shop and made unions liable for civil damages if they committed unlawful acts. In his memoirs, Tebbit called it his 'greatest achievement in government.' It was at Employment that he made his famous public remark too. He attacked the 1981 riots in London and Liverpool by noting his father's reaction to being made unemployed: 'He got on his bike and looked for work.' Norman 'on yer bike' Tebbit was born. In the 1983 election, Tebbit was the second most prominent Conservative on radio and television broadcasts, after Thatcher. After a successful two years, promotion was inevitable. He received his reward in October that year, with the brief of Trade and Industry, after Thatcher's initial bid to make him Home Secretary had been vetoed by Willie Whitelaw. He launched one of the first major privatisations by selling off British Telecom. But Tebbit's time at the DTI was shadowed by the defining moment of his political career: his injury in the Brighton bomb at that year's party conference. The scenes of Tebbit being pulled from the wreckage of the Grand Hotel are some of the most searing images of 1980s politics. His beloved wife, Margaret, was left permanently disabled. Like much of his career, his subsequent spell as Tory chairman from 1985 to 1987 was marked by controversy and drama. He disbanded the Federation of Conservative Students, repeatedly berated the BBC for its coverage and clashed with Thatcher over what polling showed was the 'TBW' factor in the upcoming election: That Bloody Woman. There was a memorable spat with David Young in the 1987 campaign, on 'wobbly Thursday' after a rogue poll showed the Tories down to just a 2 per cent lead. Despite Young's claim that 'Norman, listen to me, we're about to lose this fucking election,' it proved to be a triumphant success as the Tories were returned with a majority of 102. Yet despite a third successive term, Tebbit decided that now was the time to return to the backbenches. He had promised Margaret he would retire at the beginning of the campaign and he duly kept to his word. 'He'll carry the scar of that Brighton bombing all his life', remarked Thatcher to her friend Woodrow Wyatt. She bitterly regretted the loss of such a close like-minded ally. Tebbit was one of a series of men tipped to replace the Iron Lady at some point in the 1980s, like John Moore and Cecil Parkinson. That he should leave the cabinet said much about his love for his wife. Like much of his career, his subsequent spell as Tory chairman from 1985 to 1987 was marked by controversy and drama He formed an unlikely alliance with Michael Heseltine in 1988, when they campaigned together for the abolition of the Inner London Education Authority. But two years later, they were very much opponents once again, after Geoffrey Howe triggered the events which were to lead to the Iron Lady's downfall. Thatcher's biographer, John Campbell, noted that Tebbit proved to be her 'most visible cheerleader.' He urged her to fight on, even after the cabinet turned against her. In her memoirs, Thatcher bemoaned how she never had 'six men and true' during her time in office. But Tebbit was certainly one of the few on which she could rely. Like Thatcher, Parkinson and so many other giants of the 1980s, Tebbit stood down at the 1992 election, making way for Iain Duncan Smith – another Chingford right-winger. Ennobled, his most memorable highlight in the Lords came when he savaged John Major at the 1993 party conference over Maastricht. He proved to be an awkward opponent for most of Thatcher's successors and regularly criticised David Cameron for his modernising agenda. His speech in the 2013 debate following Baroness Thatcher's passing was among the finest that made that day. Pugnacious, outspoken, clever, brave: Norman Tebbit was the upwardly mobile icon of Thatcher's Britain.
New Statesman
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Oasis are the greatest Irish band of all time
Photo byI t is fashionable – and easy – to lampoon Oasis. They were far from the most musically or lyrically inventive band of the 1990s (surpassed by peers such as Radiohead and the Manic Street Preachers). Their later albums were patchy, and Noel Gallagher still apologises for their most wayward live performances. When their reunion tour was announced a year ago, numerous critics predicted mediocrity or outright failure. That 14 million fans sought to buy tickets – with some paying upwards of £350 – was just further proof that you can't trust people. Oasis, then, arrived on stage at Cardiff's Principality Stadium for the first show of the tour as a band with a point to prove. Noel, in particular, wore the expression of a man still asking himself whether this was a good idea. It was. Liam Gallagher – the wildcard on whom an Oasis show hinges – sang with the intensity of a teenage frontman striving for a record deal. During the band's final years, his Lennon-Lydon sneer was sometimes reduced to a Kermit-like croak (in part the result of having Hashimoto's disease). But in Cardiff, the resurrection of the voice that reverberated through the Nineties was confirmed. When combined with Noel's falsetto, you are reminded just how this melodic superpower colonised the decade. The cynical charge is that the tour is a purely monetary exercise (the brothers are forecast to make around £100m each). Noel, who combines working-class Labourism with a Thatcherite attachment to success, has never disguised his enjoyment of wealth. Yet no band intent on merely going through the motions would play a song with the punk-like fury of 'Bring It On Down' ('You're the outcast, you're the underclass/But you don't care because you're living fast'). The setlist may have been weighted towards Definitely Maybe (1994) and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (1995) – the albums that produced the quasi-national anthems of 'Live Forever', 'Wonderwall' and 'Don't Look Back in Anger' – but the Gallaghers still did enough to dispel the myth that they recorded nothing of note after these two behemoths. 'D'You Know What I Mean?', with its Apocalypse Now visuals, has never sounded more menacing. 'Stand By Me', accompanied by a montage of family photos, rarely more moving. 'Little By Little' – the only post-2000 song played – prompts one of the biggest singalongs of the evening ('But my god woke up on the wrong side of his bed'). Such is the richness of the band's back catalogue that while five B-sides are played, five number one singles are not. There were many in attendance old enough to recall Oasis's first coming – aged 13, I witnessed their shambolic second Wembley Stadium show in 2000 – but there were also plenty of others who weren't even born then. In defiance of laddish stereotypes, it is teenage girls ('the Oasisters') who now comprise the band's most obsessive fanbase, daily advertising their devotion on X and TikTok. For a generation accustomed to anodyne pop stars, there is something thrilling about the discovery of Liam, who speaks in a voice that is unmistakably his own. In common with the likes of Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, he serves a human yearning for authenticity. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Where do Oasis go from here? The band are insistent that no new material will be released – the Stone Roses, their Mancunian forebears, are one of many cautionary tales – and that this will be their final tour ('a lap of honour', in Noel's words). Their rebirth, as a year-old Labour government staggers, will inspire no shortage of reflections on national decline. Nostalgia for Britpop, already amplified by the return of Blur and Pulp, will reach new heights. But Oasis, subtly, stand apart from this trend. Behind Noel on stage was a largely unnoticed green 'Éirinn go brách' ('Ireland forever') flag. This, far more than his rarely played Union Jack guitar (which was long ago confined to a museum), is a clue to the band's real roots. All five of the original members are from Irish Catholic families; Gallagher has attributed Oasis's 'punch-the-air quality' to the rebel songs he heard played in the clubs of Manchester (recalling how his family were 'demonised' during the Troubles). Would an English Oasis have been possible? Noel, for one, believes not. 'Oasis could never have existed, been as big, been as important, been as flawed, been as loved and loathed, if we weren't all predominantly Irish,' he has said (having once declined the opportunity to write a song for the England football team). Here is a wicked irony. For a nation unsure of itself, Oasis are an enduring source of patriotic pride. This summer, as the tour reaches first Manchester and then London, commentators will muse on whether anything like 'Cool Britannia' could happen again. But while the Gallaghers, never ones for modesty, would agree that theirs is a national triumph, they would add that it is less an English than an Irish one. [See also: So you want to be Irish?] Related
