You lot have never gotten over her have you? The reason we have a dependency culture is because Brown stopped Blair reforming the welfare state. If you pay people to be poor, you will have poor people.

But the benefits system is no more generous than it was in the 1960s. The only significant change in economic incentives that has occurred since then is the decline of secure, well-paid semi-skilled employment, which was Mrs T’s doing.

What I don’t understand about Mr Fawkes argument is why the workhouse failed to abolish poverty.

Everybody did once believe that there were no social causes of poverty – it is a matter of behaviour and incentives, as he implies.

Well that was tried, it failed. The result was not sturdy independence but broken self-respect and the dependency culture of those stigmatised by the need to rely on charitable provision.

Why didn’t it work then? Why would it work now?

Is your argument that adult single benefits at half the poverty line are too generous?

You lot have never gotten over her have you?

We’re not the ones running a whole bunch of articles trying to white-wash her legacy, unlike ConservativeHome.

“economically more likely to produce growth”

Except it didn’t even do that, there were higher growth rates in the 50s and 60s. Plus the gains in growth during the 80s weren’t exactly evenly distributed.

Eighteen years after Mrs Thatcher left office, everything that goes wrong is still said to be her fault.

After all, the alternative would be to blame the left-of-centre government that has held office for the last twelve years.

“Eighteen years after Mrs Thatcher left office, everything that goes wrong is still said to be her fault.

After all, the alternative would be to blame the left-of-centre government that has held office for the last twelve years.”

Conveys my intended sentiments rather more concisely. +1

“Everybody did once believe that there were no social causes of poverty – it is a matter of behaviour and incentives, as he implies.”

Sorry to keep banging on about this but there are NO causes of poverty. There are causes of wealth: http://tomgpalmer.com/2008/12/14/liberty-as-the-remedy-to-poverty-socialism-as-a-cause/

Once we set the baseline for what we can expect from a life without markets and property rights (which Thatcher, in a very blunt, poorly directed and inconsistent way was trying to produce on some level), then we can discuss ways in which a society might allow for a more equal distribution of their products.

Can I say, as someone who is going to vote neither for Labour nor Tory at the next general election, I don’t care and we should instead be talking about what the prevalent economic ideology for the next 30 years should be, rather than what has been the prevalent economic ideology for the last 30 years?

“we should instead be talking about what the prevalent economic ideology for the next 30 years should be, rather than what has been the prevalent economic ideology for the last 30 years”

If we can’t decide what the prevalent ideology was, how will we ever decide what it will be?

Why waste time talking about ideology when we can talk about action?

Fuck off ad- Thatcher can be blamed alongside her fucking followers like Blair and Brown, who have left her free market dogma in place because they are fucking Tories- even though it has turned to shit all around us and is now discredited the fall of the City of London, as foreseen by those of us who knew that stockbroker filth could never replace real jobs of the kind Thatcher eviscerated.

Why waste time talking about ideology when we can talk about action?

Indeed. The governments revenues are currently only about three-quarters of its spending, and I gather that this problem is structural – matters will improve only slightly when the economy picks up.

Solving this problem will be the great political issue of the next Parliament – probably of the next decade. Any political movement with any intention of being taken seriously must face this issue.

The thing that depresses me most about Liberal Conspiracy is the neglect of this problem.

Conveys my intended sentiments rather more concisely

Many thanks for your reply, Kentron. I always like to be of service.

Ad,

Solving this problem will be the great political issue of the next Parliament – probably of the next decade. Any political movement with any intention of being taken seriously must face this issue.

The thing that depresses me most about Liberal Conspiracy is the neglect of this problem.

Apologies if this comes across as rude, but did you read this post? Because if you had, you would’ve noticed that I’m trying to address the very issue you’re talking about:

Ultimately, it’s the British taxpayer who has to foot the bill for these costs and I do wonder at our collective ability to pay billions for the policing & punishment of crime & drugs (for example) without there being much to demonstrate that the money we spend is leading to these problems (and their costs) being reduced.

As I’ve said before, reducing reoffending, ending the war on drugs and completely rethinking what we do with the welfare state wouldn’t just have the potential to make people’s lives better, but to save us all a lot of money. Sounds like good business to me.

And quite how any of that counts as me pinning all the blame on Thatcher is a mystery.

Rayyan: “Can I say, as someone who is going to vote neither for Labour nor Tory at the next general election, I don’t care and we should instead be talking about what the prevalent economic ideology for the next 30 years should be, rather than what has been the prevalent economic ideology for the last 30 years?”

The fact that Thatcherism (in three flavours) has dominated UK political culture for thirty years is a very good reason to talk about it. Without understanding our history, we are doomed to repeat it, blah, blah.

Critics of Thatcher tend to focus on the big events: Falklands war, miners’ strike. The big events are largely over (mining towns have not recovered) but smaller things persist in influence. Multiple subscriptions to privatisation offerings were the precursors to the expenses dishonesty of parliamentarians: a bit of fiddling of public money doesn’t matter. Manipulation of policy to create voter constituencies was taken to a higher level with the sale of council houses: there are and were better ways to spread wealth and property ownership. Belief in quick money, general distrust and social division are Thatcherite inheritances, and to reverse them requires an understanding of the cause.

Neil, I think we are very much at one on the drugs issue. Although worth noting that Thatcher was hardly the originator of government’s obsession with regulating what individuals put in their own bodies, making the title a slight misnomer. We face a legacy of overarching government, neo-liberal, conservative and socialist, in that respect and opposing that legacy might be a key uniting feature amongst liberals of many sorts.

At least margaret thatcher was the first proper green politisian in brittain. she got reed of al the coal in the erly eigties.

Nick,

I suspected you’d be with me on the drugs thing. When it’s bought straight out of the farm gate, a kilo of heroin costs about £500; by the time it reaches the UK street, the same kilo costs about £75,000. The main reason for this extraordinary mark-up is prohibition, and the consequences of that are (a) many users getting a pretty crap, more dangerous product, and (b) the number of acquisitive crimes that users commit to satisfy their addiction. So legalisation shouldn’t just be considered from the position of personal liberty (though that’s always the starting point), but from a public policy perspective, too. There was recently an estimate by Transform that legalisation could save £14bn, so it’s certainly worth a serious discussion.

You’re right to point out that Thatcher isn’t responsible for our decades of bad drugs policy; I think it was the Heath government which introduced the silly Misuse of Drugs Act. I wouldn’t claim that Thatcher is responsible for creating the problems cited in the above post; but that her policies exacerbated those problems and that created an extra burden on the state. In the years since she left office, I don’t think we’ve been particularly good at reducing those costs and, from a Future of the Left! P.O.V, I’d rather we spent more time thinking about that than pondering the demise of a capitalism which ain’t going anywhere. I’m persuaded by the case for much less Whitehall administration and much more localisation, but that’s perhaps a post for another day.

Neil, I am surprised to learn that you did not want this post to be interpreted as an attack on a famous 80s politican, given that it was entitled “The hidden costs of Thatcherism”.

There a great many countries which have also not had nationaised steel, coal, car, oil, electricity etc industries over the last several decades. And which have engaged in prvatisation progrms. And yet the UK is almost unique in the scale of its governments deficit.

Bluntly, our problems now are a consequence of decisions made over the last decade to concentrate on the quantity of money spent by the state, rather than on the results of the spending.

In other practical terms, we are at one too in that case. I have a similar experience with a self-labelled neo-marxist. We can argue for ages about how each others theories are r crazy and have legitimated terrible injustices in the past but then find that when we get onto policies that can actually make a difference now and in the future, we converge rapidly – in our case, the dismantling of trade barriers erected to impoverish the developing world and satisfy a handful of interests in the West. Even that is quite a contestable area, but the ending of drug prohibition seems increasingly to be a no-brainer on many different parts of the theoretical political spectrum.

ad,

I was just tickled by the insinuation that I’m ‘attacking’ Thatcher as a means of shielding successive Labour governments from any criticism. If someone was just to read the post title & nothing else, that’d be an understandable misinterpretation, but if that person was to read the rest of the post, they’d see that it’s a fairly mild critique of Thatcherism which then goes on to talk about the importance of reforming social policy in an age where there ain’t much money about.

2. john b . You ignore technology. British industry was over-manned , especially unskilled and semi -skilled work. When computer controlled technology removed the need for much unskilled and semi -skilled labour , the UK was hit harder because we had lower productivity rates due to higer numbers of unskilled and semi-skilled people. The development of compute controlled technology removed much of the labour from the print industry. By having final salary pensions , some of which were index linked, when the workforce is overmanned , greatly increases production costs. All parties , teachers, the employers and the unions since 1945 have failed to ensure we have had an adequately educated and trained workforce in the age of rapidly evolving electronic and computer control systems. 30 years ago there were still floors of draftsmen , now the work is done by 2-3 CAD technicians . Streel works can be run by hundreds of people when previously there were thousands. Docks used to employ thousands. The development of containers and computer controlled cranes reduced employment by a massive amount.

The recent article by O’ Grady on The Mini in the Indy demonstrates the lack of a sufficiently large skilled workforce required for development. Yes we have had a few brilliant engineers but the UK needs thousands of more pedestrian engineers, draftsmen, technicians and craftsmen in order to undertake the development which removes all the snaggs from a finished product. Thatcher never provided the support to move low and medium skilled manufacturing into high skill areas such as aero engines but then the unskilled and semi skilled unions having never been keen on losing their members to the craft unions .

There a great many countries which have also not had nationaised steel, coal, car, oil, electricity etc industries over the last several decades.

That’s true, but they have – as all virtually government always have – supported those industries with public money. Under Thatcherism, we haven’t even being doing that.

And which have engaged in prvatisation progrms. And yet the UK is almost unique in the scale of its governments deficit.
Bluntly, our problems now are a consequence of decisions made over the last decade to concentrate on the quantity of money spent by the state, rather than on the results of the spending.

In part, yes, but that’s still Thatcher’s fault – for instance, in the dogmatic belief that she inculcated in our political class, that the private sector is superior to the public sector (which has led to inordinately wasteful expenditure on PFI, PPP, internal markets, etc.).

But more importantly, the underlying cause of Britain’s particular economic malaise, of our massive deficit and our seeming incapability to deal with this crisis as well as other countries, is entirely down to the deindustrialisation that Thatcher presided over and actively encouraged (in the belief that manufacturing could be replaced by a “service economy”, an impossible fantasy which we’re all going to be paying for for the rest of our lives). Because Britain hasn’t been in a recession for 2 years, like most countries, but rather for 25 years. We’ve just been hiding that recession through consumer credit and, for the past six years, through increases in government spending.

What is so wrong with a service economy, exactly? Is there anything intrinsically less valuable about handling an IT system, or handling someone’s accounts and insurance, than making big things out of steel? Not that our manufacturing has finished anyway. It makes plenty of stuff but just employs fewer people than before.

The Left are all about fear. Hence, the need to reassure their self-doubt on Labour’s disintegration by saying the Tories will be worst. You need a bogeyman to blame rather than discuss the issues. These days its more likely to be the Daily Mail, but Thatcher still gets a mention.

Reading this blog, its amazing how you lefties feed on each others lies and manipulation of statistics. How can anyone say that benefits are not more generous than the 60s? I suspect its down to the Left being middle-class; you just don’t know anyone on benefits. Are you aware that there is now £500 grant available to those on benefits or very low incomes who get pregnant?

talk about the importance of reforming social policy in an age where there ain’t much money about.

Neil, I agree that “the age of not much money” is the big problem. And the only thing to do when you have less money coming in, is to spend less of it. And when the deficit is equal to a third of your income, you have to cut spending quickly.

That may mean the government does less, or that it does it more efficiently, but certainly, it means giving out less money.

Which means things like pay cuts, mass redundancies, outsourcing office work to India, benefits cuts, purging incapacity benefit claimants of those judged insufficiently incapable, and so on. And whipping the backbenchers through the lobbies to agree to all this. And, in the case of a Labour government, somehow getting the unions whose members are enduring some of this to keep paying out to the Party.

And starting it soon, because the debt is growing.

The only “real” job is coal mining.

Gregg @23:

The problem with your analysis is that you talk about deindustrialisation (or as I would put it, post-industrialisation) as if it was a choice.

Well, the nature of the French and German economies would imply that it was. Of course, their massive vulnerability (especially in Germany) to global downturn implies that it’s not a risk-free one. On the other hand, it’s likely that when the world picks up, so will Stuttgart, but the City is going to stay on the floor rather longer: money-go-round is not looking like a particularly good way to live right now. And it doesn’t half skew your income inequality in the bad direction.

Chris, so what do you want to do?

I once read a history of British manufacturing from 1945-1990. About the only industries to survive were the ones successive governments did nothing to help. Apparantly the gentleman in Whitehall does not always know best. So I would be skeptical of the chances of an Industrial policy actually working.

And we can’t afford much in the way of tax cuts.

India and China seem happy with deregulation – but most of our new regulations are imposed by the EU. Presumably few old regulations survived the Thatcher/ Major years.

That just leaves the health and safety/ employment/ equality/ enviromental/ etc regulations imposed under Blair and Brown. Might be a bit embarressing for the people who wrote them to repeal them.

“our seeming incapability to deal with this crisis as well as other countries”

Simply put, this is rubbish. Check forecasted German and Japanese GDP for this year; check the US national debt vs GDP. We’re all in the same boat, sinking at roughly the same speed…