That Brown-Thatcher summit
‘I also admire the fact that she is a conviction politician… I am a conviction politician like her,’ said Gordon Brown of Margaret Thatcher shortly before taking her claw on the steps of Downing Street. (Labour huff and puff, the Tories try frantic, none-too-convincing damage limitation.)
The thing is, just what are Gordon’s convictions? Apart from a puritanical, joy-killing streak, just what does he believe in? Say what you like about Thatcher, her many of her policies might have been morally bankrupt and road-tested by a mass murderer, but she took the big ideas and changed British life and politics for ever.
I say for ever, but the ‘political realities’ built by Thatcher - the economic policies, the entrenching of fear and loathing of foreigners and the demonisation of the poor - should be regarded, rather, as ‘prevailing orthodoxies’ and not as an evolutionary cul-de-sac. Brown, as things stand, with his lack of ideas and blind acceptance of these ‘political realities’, is the Thatcherite continuity candidate, like Blair before him. That’s something of a cliche these days but where, really, is the departure?
If Brown were the towering intellect of repute, why isn’t he looking for his own ideas? Why isn’t he attempting to paint his own masterpiece rather than produce a painstaking copy of Margaret’s portrait in the attic? If only he and his advisers would devote the same energy to policy as they do sticking it to the Tories, we’d have paradise on Earth.
Spend less time telling us Gordon’s got substance and more time showing that substance (if it indeed exists). New Labour should be looking for new pastures rather suckling at Thatcher’s long dry teat.
Update: Marina Hyde:
“She is not what she seems,” he once avowed. He accused Thatcher of “dishonesty” over many things, from heating allowances to defence procurement, of misleading the Commons over unemployment, of widening the gap between rich and poor in a manner designed to appeal to “City speculators”, of “failing the inner cities” and the poorest members of society, of “eroding our whole quality of life”, of “privatisation sleaze”, of “11 years of inaction in the face of the grimmest assessment of manufacturing and regional prospects”, of presiding over “a government wholly detached from the British people …” The entire column could be filled with a list of Gordon Brown’s impassioned denunciations of Margaret Thatcher.
No doubt some Westminster watchers would simply shrug “that’s politics”, in which case it seems small wonder that so many do not want a part of it, or think that things will be the same whoever they vote for.
Posted on September 14th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
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If Brown were the towering intellect of repute, why isn’t he looking for his own ideas?
Because he’s already got them. He took them in at the breast along with all that Calvinistic castor oil and nothing, nought and nowt can change them now. That’s why he’s the towering intellect of repute and we’re stuck whining in the hovel of bloggery.
The thing is, just what are Gordon’s convictions?
1 - Winning the next election
2 - Winning the one after that
3 - Repeat as necessary
4 - Er, that’s it
Thatcher’s visit, plus the adoption of Saatchi and Saatchi as the NuLabour ad agency (pedants pointing out that it’s not Maurice et al. are missing the point - as always, it’s the symbolism and presentation that counts), is perilously close to the moment at the end of 1984 where Winston gives in and realises he loves Big Brother after all. (Put it another way: I don’t recall Thatcher inviting Callaghan, Wilson or even Heath round for tea.)
Whereas Blair had the thin excuse of not believing in much in the first place (other than his own religion-enhanced sense of righteousness), Brown has previous as a left-wing intellect…so what’s his excuse now? If anything, he (perhaps even more than Blair) is symbolic of the way in which a lot of the ex-(far)lefties in Labour accepted the Thatcherite orthodoxy as a means of getting and holding on to power. All that remains is sticking it to the Tories…so that power remains in their cold dead hands.
The Labour Party is well and truly dead and buried then.
However, Thatcher was just about the only area where I found myself agreeing with Blair. He said she should have a state funeral. I agree. Then I can piss on her face.
I like the idea of Thatcher as a conviction politician. Especially if it’s a conviction for aiding and abetting a criminal like Pinochet.
A lot of people have said some bad things about Adolf Hitler over the years, and I certainly don’t agree with all of his policies, but on the other hand, he was a conviction politician.
Indeed. I should be working this morning but I bought a new DVD at the weekend and my convictions tell me I should watch that instead. Tea at Number 10 is only a phone call away, surely - if my convictions will only let me be fagged to get off the sofa.