Margaret Thatcher prided herself on her resolute consistency, a lady not for turning, a conviction politician with no time for consensus politics. In the realm of cabinet government, where authority is drawn from a majority in parliament, the ability of a leader to persuade those around them is of paramount importance. As Prime Minister one can get away with a certain amount of unilateral decision making, especially when it is junior ministers who disagree with you, but the ability of a leader to overrule senior ministers (especially the Chancellor of the Exchequer) has a short shelf life.
If the conclusion above is correct then how then did Margaret Thatcher remain in power for so long? The answer lies in one of the essential components of the Westminster system, a credible alternative government-in-waiting in opposition. After Callaghan's shaky minority Labour government fell in 1979, the party languished in fractious opposition for far too long. It put off modernization and remained committed to unpalatable socialism until Tony Blair re-branded it as New Labour after he took the leadership in 1994. Faced with such a jaundiced opposition the Falklands war gave Margaret Thatcher all she needed to win the 1983 and 1987 elections. She said after leaving the Commons that she intended to contest the 1992 election and retire about two years after that, which would have extended her tenure to nearly sixteen years. For someone who did not learn of the importance of persuasion and maintaining key supporters, this seems like a nonsensical ambition.
It is painfully obvious to all who study Westminster politics that the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer can make or break the government. The struggle between Blair and Brown has become almost legendary, in New Zealand the falling out between David Lange and Roger Douglas sunk the fourth Labour government. Margaret Thatcher battled her Chancellor Nigel Lawson over joining the ERM and he eventually resigned in 1989. That event did not destroy her but it did deepen divisions within the Tory party and should have triggered a need for caution and rebuilding on the part of the Prime Minister. But she was so self-assured, so egotistical that she continued much as she had, patronizing cabinet colleagues and taking an increasingly hard line against Europe.
Geoffrey Howe was her first Chancellor, and longtime deputy Prime Minister, a senior and extremely respected member of the Tory party. He opposed her on European policy but for a long time remained in her government, bound by loyalty and a wish to get other work done. Margaret Thatcher could not persuade him that European federation was something to be resisted, and she could not change her mind, the lady's not for turning after all. Howe resigned on the 1st of November 1990 and delivered a speech from the backbenches on the 13th that fatally weakened Margaret Thatcher, providing the opportunity for Michael Heseltine to challenge her for the leadership. The conclusion to be drawn from this is obstinacy is damaging. Die hard principle is unsustainable as politics requires the give and take of war, in order to win a battle here, one may have to sustain a loss there. Never say never. Thatcher's downfall was only ever going to happen like it did because politics is ruthlessly Darwinian, if you threaten the system it will try to eliminate you. Thatcher forgot that.
Monday 29 April 2013
Tuesday 16 April 2013
Farewell Baroness: Mourn or Shut-up
It was a sad moment when I learnt of Margaret Thatcher's death last week, sadder still when the leftist cynics from the backwaters of British obscurity cheerfully burned old newspaper clippings they had been saving since 1982, and anti-west whores like George Galloway babbled of their glee and made a fuss about the cancellation of this weeks Prime Minister's questions to make way for the funeral.
I can think of no word more appropriate than pathetic to describe the mewlings of such stuffy grudge holders. This is not to minimize the impact of Thatcherism on Britain's working class, but for these people to maintain such vehement outspoken loathing twenty two and a half years after the Iron Lady strode out of No. 10, is for them to convict themselves of a kind of stubborn selfishness that only exists in the developed world. How marvelous that Britain maintains a level of condition in society that allows people to remain off their rag about a leader after almost three decades, without sacrificing time and energy to put food on the table, or beer in their jugs. This perhaps gets at the core of their grumpy position, Thatcherism worked and Britain got richer and more powerful. It came at the expense of coal miners and industry north of London, the curmudgeons received the pain, for the gain of society as a whole. It is pathetic that these people do not accept their selfless suffering and move on, instead they judge it appropriate to disrupt and darken the farewell of an old woman who spent her life trying to make life in the UK better.
I have not written anything since the death of Margaret Thatcher. This wasn't by design or because I felt obliged to observe a mourning period and neither shave nor pick up a pen, I simply didn't feel I had anything of value to say. Quite apart from politics (I have given up trying to define my own political view) I admired Margaret Thatcher in a very general way. I was born in the final months of her Prime Ministership and I grew up in the Blair era. Like Tony Blair I suppose I have tremendous respect for Thatcher, her courage, and her personality (I suppose I am mirroring her by staying up most of the night to continue working with a scotch and soda by my side). I am not of the cohort who proclaim her as the last conviction politician, that being a glimpse of the pathetic fallacy by which people reduce history to myth-making. To me she is not at all superhuman, her success in politics being as much to do with other people as herself. At the end she was a shadowy figure, reduced by age and impediment to a cold and lonely place in retirement. The conceited curmudgeon's would not allow her to outlive the divisiveness of her government, it is my fervent hope that they allow the funeral the respect that they refuse to extend to the Iron Lady, and either mourn or shut-up.
I can think of no word more appropriate than pathetic to describe the mewlings of such stuffy grudge holders. This is not to minimize the impact of Thatcherism on Britain's working class, but for these people to maintain such vehement outspoken loathing twenty two and a half years after the Iron Lady strode out of No. 10, is for them to convict themselves of a kind of stubborn selfishness that only exists in the developed world. How marvelous that Britain maintains a level of condition in society that allows people to remain off their rag about a leader after almost three decades, without sacrificing time and energy to put food on the table, or beer in their jugs. This perhaps gets at the core of their grumpy position, Thatcherism worked and Britain got richer and more powerful. It came at the expense of coal miners and industry north of London, the curmudgeons received the pain, for the gain of society as a whole. It is pathetic that these people do not accept their selfless suffering and move on, instead they judge it appropriate to disrupt and darken the farewell of an old woman who spent her life trying to make life in the UK better.
I have not written anything since the death of Margaret Thatcher. This wasn't by design or because I felt obliged to observe a mourning period and neither shave nor pick up a pen, I simply didn't feel I had anything of value to say. Quite apart from politics (I have given up trying to define my own political view) I admired Margaret Thatcher in a very general way. I was born in the final months of her Prime Ministership and I grew up in the Blair era. Like Tony Blair I suppose I have tremendous respect for Thatcher, her courage, and her personality (I suppose I am mirroring her by staying up most of the night to continue working with a scotch and soda by my side). I am not of the cohort who proclaim her as the last conviction politician, that being a glimpse of the pathetic fallacy by which people reduce history to myth-making. To me she is not at all superhuman, her success in politics being as much to do with other people as herself. At the end she was a shadowy figure, reduced by age and impediment to a cold and lonely place in retirement. The conceited curmudgeon's would not allow her to outlive the divisiveness of her government, it is my fervent hope that they allow the funeral the respect that they refuse to extend to the Iron Lady, and either mourn or shut-up.
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