Margaret thatcher

Will Hughes succeed in stirring up trouble over Right to Buy?

Simon Hughes led the angry response to David Cameron’s thoughts on social housing, and now he’s stirring it up again. In an interview with the South London Press – picked up by Sunder Katwala over at Next Left – the Lib Dem deputy leader has attacked the Right to Buy, saying that local councils should decide whether to offer it or not. Given the Thatcherite roots of the policy, there’s a firecracker quality to Hughes’s comments: lobbed into the debate, and designed to provoke the Tories. I’m not sure the Tories will be too perturbed by Hughes’s intervention, though. Of course many of them are proud and supportive of Thatcher’s

Brown, the third worst Prime Minister since WW2?

Now here’s a poll that you can really get your teeth into. Reported in today’s FT, a survey of 100 or so academics has rated Gordon Brown as the third worst Prime Minister since the second world war. It marks him with 3.9 out of 10, ahead of only Sir Anthony Eden and Sir Alec Douglas-Home. At the other end of the scale, Clement Attlee comes out on top with 8.1 our of 10, ahead of second-placed Margaret Thatcher on 6.9. Which, as Tim Montgomerie says at ConservativeHome, is understandable enough – Attlee probably made a more indelible contribution to British life than anyone else on the list. I was

Francis Maude is right, but he must remain wary

Big words from Francis Maude, as he tells today’s Guardian that the current government is more radical than either Thatcher or Blair were in their first terms. But, to my mind, he’s right. Even looking back on the past week – with the proposals to reform policing and benefits – there’s a good deal of radical policy. And that’s before we get onto the free schools revolution or GP commissioning – or, of course, to a Budget which took shears to the size of the state as few have done so before. But Maude shouldn’t get too excited quite yet. It is all very well talking about good intentions and

RIP Lord Walker

Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester, has died aged 78. He served as a Cabinet Minister in both the Heath and Thatcher governments. He was what might be termed derisively as a ‘Wet’, and was a leading figure on the liberal side of the Conservative Party for thirty years. He was a founder member of the Tory Reform Group, which propounds One Nation Toryism and economic efficiency, ideals that have, it might be argued, profoundly influenced David Cameron’s leadership. Walker served with distinction throughout the Thatcher government, carrying the brief for Wales, Energy and Food and Fisheries. As Energy Secretary, he was a key figure during the Miner’s Strike. Walker

The ex-factor

One of the interesting features of this election campaign is the near-absence of ex-leaders in national election roles. Tony Blair has been stuck in the Middle East because of the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano and has, at any rate, been “Gored” by Gordon Brown, who is as keen to have his predecessor canvassing for Labour as Al Gore was to see ex-president Bill Clinton in the 2000 election. The former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has been more active. For the Tories, Michael Howard is standing down and has not been particularly visible. When I saw him recently in Portcullis House, he looked chipper and relaxed – not like

A New Tory Policy: Back to the Eighties

I cornered Ken Clarke after the press conference on employment and welfare today and asked him a direct question about my pet subject – Margaret Thatcher’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme. I couldn’t get in a question during the press conference itself, which was dominated by journalists from Channel 4 (three questions, come on chaps, fair’s fair!) and some bloke called Forsyth from the Spectator. I asked Clarke about his post on the Linked In social networking site asking for people’s experiences of the 1980s scheme for people wanting to come off the dole and set up their own small businesses. I have been lobbying for this for some time, as has the Federation of

What did Darling mean by his “deeper and tougher” cuts claim?

There’s been some hubbub on the good ol’ blogosphere about Darling’s claim that Labour spending cuts would be “deeper and tougher” than Thatcher’s.  Did Thatcher actually cut spending?  What would that indicatate about Labour’s plans?  And so on. Part of the confusion is caused by the different metrics that are referred to as “spending”.  So here’s a quick guide to what Darling might have had in mind: OPTION 1: Real-terms total spending.  As the below graph from the IFS shows (taken from this excellent blogpost by the FT’s Alex Barker), real-terms total public spending only fell in two years of the Thatcher premiership.  In all the other years it rose. 

The two sides of Alistair Darling

After delivering an insipid, insufficient Budget yesterday, Alistair Darling has now smuggled a little bit of honesty into the fiscal debate.  In interview with Nick Robinson, he has claimed that if Labour is re-elected its spending cuts “will be deeper and tougher” than Thatcher’s.  Needless to say, that’s a message which will not sit well with his Cabinet colleagues like Ed “investment vs cuts” Balls. And this is precisely why Darling is such a confusing figure.  Yes, he deserves some praise for being more upfront about the public finances than his predecessor ever could be, and for restricting the wilder excesses of Brown and Balls.  But it’s hard to forget

Tony Judt’s Manifesto for the Left

Anyone who cares about political debate should read the essay by the historian Tony Judt in today’s Guardian. It is an astonishing piece of work which argues for a renewal of social democracy in response to the failure of the New Labour experiment (which Judt considers as evidence of the redundancy of the philosophy of Thatcherism so willingly embraced by Blair and Brown). You may quibble with the detail — Judt remains over-sentimental about the public sector — but it is a challenge to received wisdom in all strands of dominant contemporary political discourse.  He captures what many of the liberal left feel here: “It’s difficult to feel optimistic about

Clegg: Heir to Thatcher?

Nick Clegg has a blue rose in his mouth in tomorrow’s Spectator, serenading readers – and showing his hidden Tory side. I have to say, he puts his heart into it. Not only does the Lib Dem leader say he’ll end the structural deficit with 100 percent spending cuts (not the 20 percent tax rises, 80 percent cuts combo that the Tories advocate), but he even heaps praise in Lady Thatcher. More, he describes her as something of an inspiration: just as she took on vested interests in the 1980s, so he will take on the banks now.   Personally, I can’t quite see the equivalence – and Clegg as

Revive the Enterprise Allowance Scheme

Some will see it as final proof that I have made the journey from left to right, but I have to say I don’t see it that way. In tomorrow’s Telegraph I have written a column calling for the revival of the Thatcher-era Enterprise Allowance Scheme. This initiative gave a £40 per week payment to people who wanted to get off the dole and set themselves up in business. Alumni include Alan McGee, who set up Creation Records on the EAS, Julian Dunkerton of the Superdry fashion label and visual artists Jane and Louise Wilson. New Deal of the Mind was commissioned by the Arts Council to examine the government’s response to the recesssion. Our

The Ultimate New Labour Insult

Mental illness has always taken up a lot of space in the lexicon of New Labour,  I have always thought Alistair Campbell’s own brush with the black dog had something to do with this. From Ron Davies’s “moment of madness” to Gordon Brown’s “psychological flaws”, the terror of incipient madeness has always been a New Labour nightmare. I wrote about this tendency a few years ago but recent events have brought me back the subject. It was telling that Damian McBride’s emails contained references to Frances Osborne’s state of mind – as if it would be a bad thing that she was upset by her husband’s political misfortunes. It seemed inconceivable in the

Some Thoughts on Political History

The brutal truth about politics is that a whole career can often be telescoped into a single defining event. The judgement of history can be particularly cruel on  unlucky Prime Ministers. Ted Heath’s reputation is dominated by the 1972 miners’ strike, Jim Callaghan is synonymous with the “winter of discontent” and Anthony Eden, perhaps the most ill-starred of all post-war PMs, will be forever associated with a single word: “Suez”. All those years of vaulting ambition, grinding thankless work and genuine public service reduced, in the end, to those two damning syllables. And how thin sometimes is that line between success and failure. Who remembers John Major for his remarkable