Blame Thatcher

Whenever Labour find themselves desperate for an argument (most of the time, frankly) they wheel out the old bogeyman and blame Thatcher. Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford do just that, today in the New Labour mouthpiece that is the Guardian.

The election approaches and Britain begins the long haul out of recession. What will the Conservatives do to the economy? David Cameron has claimed Margaret Thatcher’s economic revolution as his own. She had, he said, engineered an enterprise economy that was the envy of the world. Today “our country does not face economic breakdown. We’ve won the economic argument.” But, after three turbulent decades, it has ended in calamity.

It goes on in this vein for several hundred words of arse-dribble. I can recall clearly when Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street. How could I forget, I was, on the one hand, delighted, but on the other, cautious. I wanted her to lose the next election. Her own party could see it coming and ditched her. These days, I’m more forgiving. Not least because I can see clearly what she did to the economy. After a tenure of eighteen years, the Tories handed over an economy that had gone from trashed following the disastrous Callahan administration to pretty good in 1997.

Now, as Cruddas and Rutherford conveniently omit to mention, who has been in power for thirteen of the nineteen years since Thatcher’s departure? Oh, yes, that’s right, Labour. It is not the Tories of twenty years ago who trashed the economy, it’s not the Tories of fifteen years ago who sold off the gold reserves at an all time low and it wasn’t the Tories under either Thatcher or Major who decimated the pension funds.

Cruddas and Rutherford have disingenuously tried to pass the buck for the failings of the labour government onto their predecessors who have been out of power for over a decade. The economic mire that Britain now flounders in, is entirely Labour’s fault. it is not the fault of Thatcher, Major, Churchill or King John or William the Conqueror. It is the fault of Gordon Brown and the sycophants that surround him, it is Tony Blair’s fault, it is the fault of a party that believes in prizes for all and be damned with the cost – someone else will pay. Any attempts to pass it off as otherwise are seen through fairly easily as the comments to this dire piece show.

There’s a part of me that is infuriated that they take us for such fools, but annother part of me that realises that they are right. People will still vote for them.