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David Cameron: you broke it, you own it


by Dave Osler    
August 18, 2008 at 2:58 pm

David Cameron will – according to extracts from a biography published today and carried in just about every newspaper – be “as radical a social reformer as Mrs Thatcher was an economic reformer.”

He tells author Dylan Jones: “[J]ust as Margaret Thatcher mended the broken economy in the 1980s, so we want to mend Britain’s broken society.”

You have to laugh, don’t you?

For starters, I’m not sure where the idea that the 1980s Tories were somehow economically competent came from in the first place. As someone who lived through the last 18 years that party spent in government, I seem to remember the two deepest recessions of the entire post-war period, interspersed by an artificial inflationary boom, with high unemployment that Britain has yet to overcome one of the few constants of the period.

Rather than “mend a broken economy”, Thatcher took a social democratic Britain that functioned, albeit with undeniable difficulties, and injected a lethal dose of neoliberalism that smashed it to pieces. That process represents the roots of almost all the social problems we see today.

If exploitation in the workplace has increased massively, yet millions of workers are too cowed to organise collectively to improve their lot, that is because of the systematic weakening of trade unionism that was a core aspect of the Thatcher platform.

If there is intractable poverty in the face of sharply rising inequality, that is because of the continued roll-back of the welfare state that started under Thatcherism.

Homelessness was not a major feature of our towns and cities before the mass sale of council housing, while pockets of intractable long-term unemployment were few prior to the deliberate deindustrialisation of the Midlands and the North.

Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. Or something like that; BoJo can tell you what it means.

Alternatively, if you prefer your aphorisms in English rather than Latin, a sign frequently displayed in china shops often tells punters: “you broke it, you own it”. Perhaps Cameron’s words unwittingly reflect that maxim?


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About the author
Dave Osler is a regular contributor. He is a British journalist and author, ex-punk and ex-Trot. Also at: Dave's Part
· Other posts by Dave Osler

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Blog ,Crime ,Economy


7 responses in total   ||  



Reader comments

I don’t know what to make of it really. I am not overly keen on the moralising agenda Cameron seems to be embarking on – but it seems as though his definition of ‘broken society’ isn’t the same as what most people would believe it to be. His focus seems to be on crime (which is definitely a problem in inner-cities), disaffected youths (we do have the highest ‘neets’ rate in Europe) and strengthening communities (which can’t really be that much of a bad thing).

I think David Osler is falling into the same mistake Labour is making – somehow holding David Cameron responsible for a Conservative administration that hasn’t been in power for 11 years with most of the frontbenchers in the previous administration either dead or retired from politics.

Anyway, what’s the alternative? Keep Brown and his cronies in power for another five years? No thanks. I’ve been living under Labour for eleven years, and they are no longer a party I could morally support. They have become authoritarian, incompetent and dangerously out of touch with the public. I’m ready to give Cameron and his ‘broken society’ agenda a chance – because let’s face, it couldn’t possibly get any worst than Labour! And a spell in opposition is exactly what Labour needs.

And Labour did what exactly to change anything Thatcher had created?

3. Jennie Rigg

“let’s face, it couldn’t possibly get any worst than Labour”

As a supporter of neither of the main two, I have to say: I bet you a tenner it could.

4. Letters From A Tory

Interesting that Tony Blair didn’t role back the reduction of union power that you claim destroyed this country, and neither has Gordon Brown (in fact, Blair curbed union powers at the party conference for the first time in Labour’s history) – could that be because Blair, like everyone other rational person, saw that the unions were themselves destroying this country and had far too much power?

Just a thought.

http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com

No LFAT, I’m afraid that “thought” isn’t very “interesting” at all. Blair and Brown did not reverse anti-union legislation because they are right-wingers like yourself. It is not the case that “everyone other rational person” thinks that about the unions, just right-wingers like your good self, Blair and Brown.

Good post Dave. The bare-faced cheek of this twat Cameron fair takes my breath away. The vapidity of it is as irksome as its disengenuity. Thatcher at least had a very clear economic vision with a very clear mission, which, as LFAT eminds us, was that “unions-” [and by extension protection for working people] “-must be destroyed.” Having a snide pop at fat people simply doesn’t have the same Nietzchean call to arms.

6. Dirty Euro

Labour could only do what it was allowed to do by the elites in the media. It was the tories that did all right wing stuff.

7. Lee Griffin

Indeed, Labour are innocent victims.


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