British conservative ideology from the 1980s onward
This article is about the political ideology. For the optical illusion, see
Thatcher effect
.
Thatcherism
is a form of
British conservative
ideology named after
Conservative Party
leader
Margaret Thatcher
that relates to not just her political platform and particular policies but also her
personal character
and style of management while in office. Proponents of Thatcherism are referred to as
Thatcherites
. The term has been used to describe the principles of the
British government under Thatcher
from the
1979 general election
to
her resignation in 1990
, but it also receives use in describing administrative efforts continuing into the Conservative governments under
John Major
and
David Cameron
throughout the 1990s and 2010s.
In international terms, Thatcherites have been described as a part of the general
socio-economic movement
known as
neoliberalism
, with different countries besides the United Kingdom (such as the United States) sharing similar policies around expansionary
capitalism
.
[2]
Thatcherism represents a systematic, decisive rejection and reversal of the
post-war consensus
inside Great Britain in terms of governance, whereby the major political parties largely agreed on the central themes of
Keynesianism
, the
welfare state
,
nationalised industry
, and
close regulation
of the
British economy
before Thatcher's rise to prominence. Under her administration, there was one major exception to Thatcherite changes: the
National Health Service
(NHS), which was widely popular with the British public.
In 1982, Thatcher promised that the NHS was "safe in our hands".
The exact terms of what makes up Thatcherism and its specific legacy in British history over the past decades are controversial. Ideologically, Thatcherism has been described by
Nigel Lawson
, Thatcher's
Chancellor of the Exchequer
from 1983 to 1989, as a political platform emphasising
free markets
with restrained
government spending
and
tax cuts
that gets coupled with
British nationalism
both at home and abroad.
Thatcher herself rarely used the word "Thatcherism". However, she gave a speech in
Solihull
during her campaign for the
1987 general election
and included in a discussion of the economic successes the remark: "that's what I call Thatcherism".
The Daily Telegraph
stated in April 2008 that the programme of the next non-Conservative government, with
Tony Blair
's "
New Labour
" organisation governing the nation throughout the 1990s and 2000s, basically accepted the central reform measures of Thatcherism such as
deregulation
,
privatisation
of key national industries, maintaining a
flexible labour market
, marginalising the
trade unions
and
centralising power
from
local authorities
to central government.
[7]
While Blair distanced himself from certain aspects of Thatcherism earlier in his career, in his 2010 autobiography
A Journey
, he argued both that "Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period" and as well that "much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change."
Overview
[
edit
]
[A] mixture of
free markets
,
financial discipline
, firm control over
public expenditure
,
tax cuts
,
nationalism
, "
Victorian values
" (of the
Samuel Smiles
self-help variety
),
privatisation
and a dash of
populism
.
Thatcherism attempts to promote low inflation, the
small state
and
free markets
through
tight control of the money supply
,
privatisation
and constraints on the
labour movement
. It is often compared with
Reaganomics
in the United States,
economic rationalism
in Australia and
Rogernomics
in New Zealand and as a key part of the worldwide
economic liberal
movement.
Thatcherism is thus often compared to
classical liberalism
.
Milton Friedman
said that "Margaret Thatcher is not in terms of belief a Tory. She is a
nineteenth-century Liberal
".
Thatcher herself stated during a speech in 1983: "I would not mind betting that if Mr Gladstone were alive today he would apply to join the Conservative Party".
[11]
In the 1996 Keith Joseph memorial lecture, Thatcher argued: "The kind of Conservatism which he and I [...] favoured would be best described as 'liberal', in the old-fashioned sense. And I mean the liberalism of Mr Gladstone, not of the latter day
collectivists
".
[12]
Thatcher once told
Friedrich Hayek
: "I know you want me to become a Whig; no, I am a Tory". Hayek believed "she has felt this very clearly".
The relationship between Thatcherism and liberalism is complicated. Thatcher's former defence secretary
John Nott
claimed that "it is a complete misreading of her beliefs to depict her as a nineteenth-century Liberal".
As Ellen Meiksins Wood has argued, Thatcherite
capitalism
was compatible with traditional British political institutions. As prime minister, Thatcher did not challenge ancient institutions such as the
monarchy
or the
House of Lords
, but some of the most recent additions, such as the trade unions.
Indeed, many leading Thatcherites, including Thatcher herself, went on to join the House of Lords, an honour which
William Ewart Gladstone
, for instance, had declined.
Thinkers closely associated with Thatcherism include
Keith Joseph
,
Enoch Powell
, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. In an interview with
Simon Heffer
in 1996, Thatcher stated that the two greatest influences on her as Conservative leader had been Joseph and Powell, who were both "very great men".
Thatcher was a strong critic of
communism
,
Marxism
and
socialism
. Biographer
John Campbell
reports that in July 1978, when asked by a Labour MP in Commons what she meant by socialism, "she was at a loss to reply. What in fact she meant was Government support for inefficient industries, punitive taxation, regulation of the labour market, price controls – everything that interfered with the functioning of the free economy".
Thatcherism before Thatcher
[
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]
Several commentators have traced the origins of Thatcherism in post-war British politics. The historian Ewen Green claimed there was resentment of the inflation, taxation and the constraints imposed by the labour movement, which was associated with the so-called
Buttskellite consensus
in the decades before Thatcher came to prominence. Although the Conservative leadership accommodated itself to the
Clement Attlee
government's post-war reforms, there was continuous right-wing opposition in the lower ranks of the party, in right-wing pressure groups like the Middle Class Alliance and the People's League for the Defence of Freedom and later in think tanks like the
Centre for Policy Studies
. For example, in the
1945 general election
, the Conservative Party chairman
Ralph Assheton
had wanted 12,000 abridged copies of
The Road to Serfdom
(a book by the anti-socialist economist Friedrich Hayek later closely associated with Thatcherism),
taking up one-and-a-half tons of the party's paper ration, distributed as election propaganda.
The historian Christopher Cooper traced the formation of the
monetarist
economics at the heart of Thatcherism back to the resignation of the Conservative chancellor of the Exchequer,
Peter Thorneycroft
, in 1958.
As early as 1950, Thatcher accepted the consensus of the day about the welfare state, claiming the credit belonged to the Conservatives in a speech to the
Conservative Association
annual general meeting. Biographer
Charles Moore
states:
Neither at the beginning of her career nor when she was prime minister, did Margaret Thatcher ever reject the wartime foundations of the welfare state, whether in health, social policy or education. In this she was less radical than her critics or some of her admirers supposed. Her concern was to focus more on abuse of the system, on bureaucracy and union militancy, and on the growth of what later came to be called the dependency culture, rather than on the system itself.
Historian
Richard Vinen
is sceptical about there being Thatcherism before Thatcher.
[
further explanation needed
]
Ideological definition
[
edit
]
Thatcher saw herself as creating a
libertarian
movement,
[24]
[25]
rejecting traditional
Toryism
.
[26]
Thatcherism is associated with libertarianism within the Conservative Party,
albeit one of libertarian ends achieved by using strong leadership.
[28]
British political commentator
Andrew Marr
has called libertarianism the "dominant, if unofficial, characteristic of Thatcherism".
[29]
Whereas some of her heirs, notably
Michael Portillo
and
Alan Duncan
, embraced this libertarianism, others in the Thatcherite movement such as
John Redwood
sought to become more
populist
.
[30]
[31]
Some commentators have argued that Thatcherism should not be considered properly libertarian. Noting the tendency towards strong central government in matters concerning the trade unions and local authorities,
Andrew Gamble
summarised Thatcherism as "the free economy and the strong state".
Simon Jenkins
accused the Thatcher government of carrying out a nationalisation of Britain.
Libertarian political theorist
Murray Rothbard
did not consider Thatcherism to be libertarian and heavily criticised Thatcher and Thatcherism, stating that "Thatcherism is all too similar to
Reaganism
: free-market rhetoric masking
statist
content".
Stuart McAnulla said that Thatcherism is actually
liberal conservatism
, a combination of liberal economics and a strong state.
Thatcherism as a form of government
[
edit
]
Another important aspect of Thatcherism is the style of governance. Britain in the 1970s was often referred to as "ungovernable". Thatcher attempted to redress this by centralising a great deal of power to herself as prime minister, often bypassing traditional cabinet structures (such as cabinet committees). This personal approach also became identified with personal toughness at times, such as the
Falklands War
in 1982, the
IRA bomb at the Conservative conference
in 1984 and the
miners' strike
in 1984?85.
Sir Charles Powell
, the foreign affairs private secretary to the Prime Minister (1984?1991 and 1996), described her style as such: "I've always thought there was something
Leninist
about Mrs Thatcher which came through in the style of government: the absolute determination, the belief that there's a vanguard which is right and if you keep that small, tightly knit team together, they will drive things through ... there's no doubt that in the 1980s, No. 10 could beat the bushes of Whitehall pretty violently. They could go out and really confront people, lay down the law, bully a bit".
Criticism
[
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]
By 1987, after Thatcher's successful third re-election, criticism of Thatcherism increased.
At the time, Thatcher claimed it was necessary to tackle the "culture of dependency" by government intervention to stop socialised welfare.
In 1988, she caused controversy when she made the remarks, "You do not blame society. Society is not anyone. You are personally responsible" and, "Don't blame society ? that's no one."
These comments attracted significant criticism, including from other conservatives due to their belief in individual and collective responsibility.
In 1988, Thatcher told the party conference that her third term was to be about 'social affairs'. During her last three years in power, she attempted to reform socialised welfare, differing from her earlier stated goal of "rolling back the state".
Economic positions
[
edit
]
Thatcherite economics
[
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]
Thatcherism is associated with the economic theory of
monetarism
, notably put forward by
Friedrich Hayek
's
The Constitution of Liberty
which Thatcher had banged on a table while saying "this is what we believe". In contrast to previous government policy, monetarism placed a priority on controlling inflation over controlling unemployment. According to monetarist theory, inflation is the result of there being too much money in the economy. It was claimed that the government should seek to control the
money supply
to control inflation. By 1979, it was not only the Thatcherites arguing for stricter inflation control. The Labour Chancellor
Denis Healey
had already adopted some monetarist policies, such as reducing public spending and selling off the government's shares in
BP
.
Moreover, it has been argued that the Thatcherites were not strictly monetarist. A common theme centres on the Medium Term Financial Strategy, issued in the 1980 budget, which consisted of targets for reducing the growth of the money supply in the following years. After overshooting many of these targets, the Thatcher government revised the targets upwards in 1982. Analysts have interpreted this as an admission of defeat in the battle to control the money supply. The economist C. F. Pratten claimed that "since 1984, behind a veil of rhetoric, the government has lost any faith it had in technical monetarism. The money supply, as measured by
M3
, has been allowed to grow erratically, while calculation of the
public sector borrowing requirement
is held down by the ruse of subtracting the proceeds of privatisation as well as taxes from government expenditure. The principles of monetarism have been abandoned".
Thatcherism is also associated with
supply-side economics
. Whereas
Keynesian economics
holds that the government should stimulate economic growth by increasing demand through increased credit and public spending, supply-side economists argue that the government should instead intervene only to create a free market by lowering taxes, privatising state industries and increasing restraints on trade unionism.
[
citation needed
]
Trade union legislation
[
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]
Reduction in the power of the trades unions was made gradually, unlike the approach of the
Edward Heath
government, and the most significant single confrontation with the unions was the
National Union of Mineworkers
(NUM) strike of 1984?1985, in which the miners' union was eventually defeated. Evidence shows that the Conservative Party and the NUM anticipated this confrontation with the trade unions. The outcome contributed to the resurgence of the
power of capital over labour
.
Domestic and social positions
[
edit
]
All too often the ills of this country are passed off as those of society. Similarly, when action is required, society is called upon to act. But society as such does not exist except as a concept. Society is made up of people. It is people who have duties and beliefs and resolve. It is people who get things done. [Thatcher] prefers to think in terms of the acts of individuals and families as the real sinews of society rather than of society as an abstract concept. Her approach to society reflects her fundamental belief in personal responsibility and choice. To leave things to
society
is to run away from the real decisions, practical responsibility and effective action.
[44]
Thatcherite morality
[
edit
]
Thatcherism is associated with a conservative stance on
morality
.
Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (2012)
argues that Thatcherism married conservatism with
free-market economics
. Thatcherism did not propose dramatic new
panaceas
such as Milton Friedman's
negative income tax
. Instead, the goal was to create a rational
tax-benefit economic system
that would increase British
efficiency
while supporting a conservative social system based on traditional morality. There would still be a minimal
safety net
for the poor, but the major emphasis was on encouraging individual effort and
thrift
. Thatcherism sought to minimise the importance of welfare for the middle classes and reinvigorate Victorian
bourgeois
virtues. Thatcherism was family centred, unlike the extreme individualism of most neoliberal models. It had its roots in historical experiences such as
Methodism
and the fear of the too-powerful state that had troubled Hayek.
Norman Tebbit
, a close ally of Thatcher, laid out in a 1985 lecture what he thought to be the
permissive society
that conservatives should oppose:
Bad art was as good as good art. Grammar and spelling were no longer important. To be clean was no better than to be filthy. Good manners were no better than bad. Family life was derided as an outdated bourgeois concept. Criminals deserved as much sympathy as their victims. Many homes and classrooms became disorderly; if there was neither right nor wrong there could be no basis for punishment or reward. Violence and soft pornography became accepted in the media. Thus was sown the wind; and we are now reaping the whirlwind.
[46]
Despite her association with
social conservatism
, Thatcher voted in 1966 to legalise homosexuality, one of the few Conservative MPs to do so.
[47]
[48]
That same year, she also voted in support of legal abortion.
[49]
However, in the 1980s during her time as prime minister, the Thatcher government enacted
Section 28
, a law that opposed the "intentional promotion" of homosexuality by local authorities and "promotion" of the teaching of "the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" in schools.
[50]
In her 1987 speech to the Conservative Party conference, Thatcher stated:
Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay ... All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life?yes, cheated.
[51]
The law was opposed by many
gay rights
advocates such as
Stonewall
and
OutRage!
. Tony Blair's Labour government repealed it in 2000 (in Scotland) and 2003.
[52]
[53]
Conservative prime minister David Cameron later issued an official apology for previous Conservative policies on homosexuality, specifically the introduction of the controversial Section 28 laws from the 1980s, viewing past ideological views as "a mistake" with
his ideological direction
.
[54]
Regarding
feminism
Thatcher said "The feminists hate me, don't they? And I don't blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison"
[55]
and "I owe nothing to
Women's lib
".
[56]
Sermon on the Mound
[
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]
In May 1988, Thatcher gave an address to the
General Assembly
of the
Church of Scotland
. In the speech, Thatcher offered a theological justification for her ideas on capitalism and the market economy. She said, "Christianity is about spiritual redemption, not social reform", and she quoted
St. Paul
by saying, "If a man will not work he shall not eat". Choice played a significant part in Thatcherite reforms, and Thatcher said that choice was also Christian, stating that
Jesus Christ
chose to lay down his life and that all individuals have the God-given right to choose between
good and evil
.
Foreign policy
[
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]
Atlanticism
[
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]
Whilst Thatcher was prime minister, she greatly embraced
transatlantic relations
with US president
Ronald Reagan
. She often publicly supported Reagan's policies even when other Western allies were not as vocal. For example, she granted permission for American planes to use British bases for raids, such as the
1986 United States bombing
of
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
, and allowed American cruise missiles and Pershing missiles to be housed on British soil in response to Soviet deployment of SS-20 nuclear missiles targeting Britain and other Western European nations.
Europe
[
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]
While
Euroscepticism
has for many become a characteristic of Thatcherism, Thatcher was far from consistent on the issue, only becoming truly Eurosceptic in the last years of her time as prime minister. Thatcher supported Britain's entry into the
European Economic Community
in 1973, campaigned for a "Yes" vote in the
1975 referendum
[58]
and signed the
Single European Act
in 1986.
[59]
Towards the end of the 1980s, Thatcher (and so Thatcherism) became increasingly vocal in its opposition to allowing the
European Community
to supersede British sovereignty. In a famous 1988 Bruges speech, Thatcher declared: "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level, with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels".
Dispute over the term
[
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]
It is often claimed that the word
Thatcherism
was coined by cultural theorist
Stuart Hall
in a 1979
Marxism Today
article.
[61]
However, this is not true as Tony Heath first used the term in an article he wrote that appeared in
Tribune
on 10 August 1973. Writing as
Tribune
'
s education correspondent, Heath wrote: "It will be argued that teachers are members of a profession which must not be influenced by political considerations. With the blight of Thatcherism spreading across the land that is a luxury that only the complacent can afford".
[62]
Although the term had been widely used before then,
not all social critics have accepted the term as valid, with the
High Tory
journalist
T. E. Utley
believing "There is no such thing as Thatcherism".
[65]
Utley contended that the term was a creation of Thatcher's enemies who wished to damage her by claiming that she had an inflexible devotion to a particular set of principles and also by some of her friends who had little sympathy for what he called "the English political tradition" because it facilitated "compromise and consensus". Utley argued that a free and competitive economy, rather than being an innovation of Thatcherism, was one "more or less permanent ingredient in modern Conservative philosophy":
It was on that principle that Churchill fought the 1945 election, having just read Hayek's
Road to Serfdom
. [...] What brought the Tories to 13 years of political supremacy in
1951
was the slogan 'Set the people free'. [...] There is absolutely nothing new about the doctrinal front that she presents on these matters. [...] As for 'privatisation', Mr. Powell proposed it in [...] 1968. As for 'property-owning democracy', I believe it was
Anthony Eden
who coined the phrase.
In foreign policy, Utley claimed Thatcher's desire to restore British greatness did not mean "primarily a power devoted to the preservation of its own interests" but that she belonged "to that militant Whig branch of English Conservatism...her view of foreign policy has a high moral content". In practical terms, he claimed this expressed itself in her preoccupation with "the freedom of Afghanistan rather than the security of Ulster".
Such leftist critics as
Anthony Giddens
claim that Thatcherism was purely an ideology and argue that her policies marked a change which was dictated more by political interests than economic reasons:
Rather than by any specific logic of capitalism, the reversal was brought about by voluntary reductions in social expenditures, higher taxes on low incomes and the lowering of taxes on higher incomes. This is the reason why in Great Britain in the mid 1980s the members of the top decile possessed more than a half of all the wealth.
To justify this by means of economic "objectivities" would be an ideology. What is at play here are interests and power.
The Conservative historian of
Peterhouse
,
Maurice Cowling
, also questioned the uniqueness of "Thatcherism". Cowling claimed that Thatcher used "radical variations on that patriotic conjunction of freedom, authority, inequality, individualism and average decency and respectability, which had been the Conservative Party's theme since at least 1886". Cowling further contended that the "Conservative Party under Mrs Thatcher has used a radical rhetoric to give intellectual respectability to what the Conservative Party has always wanted".
Historians Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite and Natalie Thomlinson have argued that by the 1970s, Britons were keen on defining and claiming their individual rights, identities and perspectives. They demanded greater personal autonomy and self-determination and less outside control. They angrily complained that the establishment was withholding it. They argue that this shift in concerns had helped cause Thatcherism and was incorporated into its appeal.
Criticism
[
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]
Critics of Thatcherism claim that its successes were obtained only at the expense of great
social costs
to the British population. There were nearly 3.3 million unemployed in Britain in 1984, compared to 1.5 million when she first came to power in 1979, though that figure had reverted to 1.6 million by the end of 1990.
While credited with reviving Britain's economy, Thatcher also was blamed for spurring a doubling of the relative poverty rate. Britain's childhood-poverty rate in 1997 was the highest in Europe.
[72]
When she resigned in 1990, 28% of the children in Great Britain were considered to be below the
poverty line
, a number that kept rising to reach a peak of nearly 30% during the government of Thatcher's successor,
John Major
.
[72]
During her government, Britain's
Gini coefficient
reflected this growing difference, going from 0.25 in 1979 to 0.34 in 1990, at about which value it remained for the next 20 years, under both Conservative and Labour governments.
[73]
Thatcher's legacy
[
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]
The extent to which one can say Thatcherism has a continuing influence on British political and economic life is unclear. It could be said that a "post-Thatcherite consensus" exists in modern British political culture, especially regarding monetary policy. In the 1980s, the now defunct
Social Democratic Party
adhered to a "tough and tender" approach in which Thatcherite reforms were coupled with additional welfare provisions.
Neil Kinnock
, leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992, initiated Labour's rightward shift across the
political spectrum
by largely concurring with the economic policies of the Thatcher government. The
New Labour
governments of
Tony Blair
and
Gordon Brown
were described as "neo-Thatcherite" by some on the left since many of their economic policies mimicked those of Thatcher.
[74]
In 1999, twenty years after Thatcher had come to power, the Conservative Party held a dinner in London Hilton to honour the anniversary. During the dinner, several speeches were given. To Thatcher's astonishment, the Conservatives had decided that it was time to shelve the economic policies of the 1980s. The Conservative Party leader at the time,
William Hague
, said that the party had learnt its lesson from the 1980s and called it a "great mistake to think that all Conservatives have to offer is solutions based on free markets".
His deputy at the time
Peter Lilley
elaborated and said, "belief in the free market has only ever been part of Conservatism".
In 2002,
Peter Mandelson
, who had served in Blair's Cabinet, famously declared that "we are all Thatcherites now".
[76]
Most major British political parties today accept the trade union legislation, privatisations and general free market approach to government that
Thatcher's governments
installed.
[
citation needed
]
Before 2010, no major political party in the United Kingdom had committed to reversing the Thatcher government's reforms of the economy, although in the aftermath of the
Great Recession
from 2007 to 2012, the then Labour Party leader
Ed Miliband
had indicated he would support stricter
financial regulation
[77]
and industry-focused policy
[78]
in a move to a more mixed economy. Although Miliband was said by the
Financial Times
to have "turned his back on many of New Labour's tenets, seeking to prove that an openly socialist party could win the backing of the British electorate for the first time since the 1970s",
[79]
in 2011 Miliband had declared his support for Thatcher's reductions in income tax on top earners, her legislation to change the rules on the closed shop and strikes before ballots, as well as her introduction of
Right to Buy
, saying Labour had been wrong to oppose these reforms at the time.
[80]
Moreover, the UK's comparative
macroeconomic
performance has improved since implementing Thatcherite economic policies. Since Thatcher resigned as British prime minister in 1990, British economic growth was, on average, higher than the other large European economies (i.e. Germany, France and Italy).
[
citation needed
]
Such comparisons have been controversial for decades.
Tony Blair wrote in his 2010 autobiography
A Journey
that "Britain needed the industrial and economic reforms of the Thatcher period". He described Thatcher's efforts as "ideological, sometimes unnecessarily so" while also stating that "much of what she wanted to do in the 1980s was inevitable, a consequence not of ideology but of social and economic change." Blair additionally labelled these viewpoints as a matter of "basic fact".
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Thatcher's 1979 election victory, the
BBC
surveyed opinions which opened with the following comments:
[81]
To her supporters, she was a revolutionary figure who transformed Britain's stagnant economy, tamed the unions and re-established the country as a world power. Together with US presidents Reagan and
Bush
, she helped bring about the
end of the Cold War
. But her 11-year premiership was also marked by social unrest, industrial strife and high unemployment. Her critics claim British society is still feeling the effect of her divisive economic policies and the culture of greed and selfishness they allegedly promoted.
From the viewpoint of late 2019, the state of British politics showed that Thatcherism had suffered a "sad fate," according to
The Economist
Bagehot column.
As a political-economic philosophy, Thatcherism was originally built upon four components: commitment to
free enterprise
;
British nationalism
;
a plan to strengthen the state by improving efficiency; and a belief in traditional
Victorian values
especially hard work and civic responsibility.
The tone of Thatcherism was establishment bashing, with intellectuals a prime target, and that tone remains sharp today.
Bagehot argues that some Thatcherisms have become mainstream, such as a more efficient operation of the government. Others have been sharply reduced, such as insisting that
deregulation
is always the answer to everything. The dream of restoring traditional values by creating a property-owning democracy has failed in Britain ? ownership in the stock market has plunged, as has the proportion of young people who are homebuyers. Her privatisation programme became suspect when it appeared to favour investors rather than customers.
Recent developments in Britain reveal a deep conflict between Thatcherite free enterprise and Thatcherite nationalism. She wanted to reverse Britain's decline by fostering entrepreneurship ? but immigrants have often played an important role as entrepreneurial leaders in Britain.
[
citation needed
]
Bagehot says Britain is "more successful at hosting world-class players than producing them." In the course of the
Brexit
process, nationalists have denounced European controls over Britain's future, while business leaders often instead prioritise the maintenance of their leadership of the European market. Thatcher herself showed a marked degree of Euroscepticism when she warned against a "
European superstate
."
[88]
[89]
Evaluating whether or not political conservatives of the 2020s continue the neoliberal legacy of prior years,
Theresa May
's Conservative Party election manifesto has attracted attention due to its inclusion of the lines: "We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality." Journalists such as Ross Gittins of
The Sydney Morning Herald
have cited this as a move away from the standard arguments made historically by Thatcherites and related advocates.
[2]
See also
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Gittins, Ross (18 July 2017).
"The neoliberalism of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan has run its course"
.
The Sydney Morning Herald
. Retrieved
6 December
2022
.
- ^
Kampfner, John (17 April 2008).
"Margaret Thatcher, inspiration to New Labour"
.
The Telegraph
.
Archived
from the original on 12 January 2022
. Retrieved
30 June
2011
.
- ^
Lawson 1992
, p. 64, quoted in
Berlinski (2011
, p. 115).
- ^
"Speech to Conservative Party Conference"
. Margaret Thatcher Foundation. 14 October 1983
. Retrieved
3 November
2020
.
- ^
"Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture ('Liberty and Limited Government')"
. Margaret Thatcher Foundation. 11 January 1996
. Retrieved
3 November
2020
.
- ^
Oakley, Robin
(23 November 1990). "Thatcherism's end begins debate over style and ideology".
The Sunday Times
.
- ^
d'Ancona, Matthew
(5 March 1991). "Into the age of the individual ? Labour's chance to write the next chapter of political history".
The Guardian
.
- ^
"What Was Right With the 1980s".
Financial Times
. 5 April 1994.
- ^
"Resignation of Thatcher ? Strident heroine of the corner shop who fought for hard-headed virtues".
The Sunday Times
. 25 November 1990.
- ^
Marr, Andrew
(3 January 1994). "Why unhappy British are yearning for days of order".
The Straits Times
.
- ^
Shrimsley, Robert (17 August 1995). "Redwood Pushes for Populist Right".
Financial Times
.
- ^
Shrimsley, Robert (18 August 1995). "Think Right ? The Thatcherites are Divided, but May Yet Rule".
The Times
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