Sally N. •Apology accepted Keith. I should have seen the flippancy but, to be honest, I am beginning to resent having to defend my views which are not radical or indeed right-wing.
I merely see Mrs T as necessary at the time she became PM. The fact that there was nobody in Cabinet anywhere near as strong as she was only added to her belief that she was invincible. Had there been a man worthy of the description who was prepared to challenge her, she may have toned it down. As it was, she was ousted by cowards in her own party.
I remember being aware of foreigners saying how much they admired her so maybe its individual memories.
Having worked in close proximity to the original members of New Labour, I can honestly say most of them are champagne socialists and would sell their grandmothers for tuppence. Aneuryn Bevan would spin in his grave at the current set-up.
Keith
Keith M. •Sally – your last comment s really made me smile, so I think I shall stop now, too, with a final word myself. You may actually be right about Mrs T being necessary – rather like the piece of grit in an oyster.
Trouble is we don’t yet have a pearl to show for it.
Emilio
Emilio V. •The essence, really, is how far Margaret Thatcher, as an individual, inspired and drove the policies that are associated with Thatcherism, or whether with brilliant opportunism she simply rode a rising global wave started with Proposition 13 in California, of anti-statalism and the unfolding of a technological revolution and structural industrial reorganization triggered by the breakthrough of new communication technologies.
Little noticed is that the last Callaghan’s government had an approval rate of over 50% in the summer of 1978, before the Winter of Discontent, and the economic outlook of Britain at that time was actually starting to improve. The last Labour government under Callaghan’s leadership and IMF supervision had been implementing significant spending cuts while starting to reduce tax rates, enforcing new fiscal discipline rules and gradually reducing the quantity of money supplied to reduce inflation. Callaghan even told a press conference during 1977 that Keynesianism was “dead” as we can no longer afford it.
To push the comparison a bit too far, it is somehow ironic that the Thatcher Revolution, like the French Revolution, happened when actually the public demand was finally being addressed with the right reform policies.
Keith Melton - Green Lib Dem 