Blair goes, Thatcherism lives on

23 June 2007

In the last days of Blair’s premiership, Simon Jenkins is struck by the stunning resilience of Thatcherite doctrine: in time, New Labour will be seen as nothing but a change of crew

As a result, on taking office in 1997, Blair’s policy cupboard was astonishingly bare of originality. Apart from devolution and a ragbag of targetry, it was a vapid concoction of ‘third way’ platitudes. Civil servants expecting to receive detailed briefs from incoming policy groups received nothing, only demands from Blair for daily initiatives to respond to headlines. Brown arrived at the Treasury scarcely better equipped, committed only to honouring Tory spending limits and to a modest scheme, ludicrously overspun, to relocate the monetary policy committee in the Bank of England. Blair and Brown were like two generals who knew how to win a bridgehead but lacked a plan for moving beyond.

There was one institution to hand with policies and to spare — the Treasury, and the new government grasped at its offerings with alacrity. The Treasury was the holy shrine of Thatcherism. Flitting through its corridors were the Marx and Engels of the new ideology, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson. To Brown, here was a department of clever, aloof, secretive ascetics who talked only to bankers and to God. Though Brown did not warm to Treasury officials — or anyone in government — he liked their ethos. Under the 1994 Granita agreement with Blair he enjoyed sovereignty over domestic policy and now happily delivered Thatcherism to the Downing Street court, against any amount of Cabinet and party scepticism.

Brown proved more Thatcherite than any of his predecessors, plunging where they had feared to tread. Thatcher had opposed rail, coal and Post Office privatisation. Brown not only accepted every privatisation so far undertaken but faced down Blair and insisted that the London Tube be sold on risk-free 30-year contracts to private companies. He privatised the Royal Mint, the Tote, the Commonwealth Development Corporation and as much as he could of the government estate, even selling the Inland Revenue to an offshore tax shelter. He encouraged councils to privatise their tower blocks, pension funds, parking schemes, even themselves (Westminster City is run by a private company). Brown loved Thatcherite terminology, talking about tiger economies, turbo-capitalism, cyber-revolution and e-government.