One Nation Toryism was pushed aside by Thatcherism and now 'true' Conservativism is emerging in party of the right now that UK Labour have moved their policies onto former Tory lawns?
Excellent đ§”. It is extraordinary that the economic theory underlying Thatcherism, after George Osborne tested it to destruction, & widely discredited by academic economists (I.e. those not employed by banks) even before, is still so accepted politically, that Rachel Reeves has to pay it lip service.
The Tories are lost because every part of their ideology has failed. Commentary on the leadership race has focused on the candidates, but their fundamental problem is that their entire worldview has collapsed. By me, for Bloomberg - £ but screengrabs: 𧔠www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
The question facing the Conservative party is what to do when its core beliefs turn out to be fantasies.
Cranking that thatcherism dial even though it's not designed to go any higher
Yes thatcherism the gift that keeps on giving! Worse working class idiots vote for them for more harm to the country as they believe the narrative the Tories are a safe pair of hands!
There's a truth there. But Thatcherism in the 1980's and 2010-24 were both never what they said they were. The state never shrank or really "deregulated" it just offloaded hard choices onto people who didn't vote conservative. That meant zombie sectors in 1980, by 2024 their voters were the zombies.
The Tories are lost because every part of their ideology has failed. Commentary on the leadership race has focused on the candidates, but their fundamental problem is that their entire worldview has collapsed. By me, for Bloomberg - £ but screengrabs: 𧔠www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...
The question facing the Conservative party is what to do when its core beliefs turn out to be fantasies.
Fourteen years ago the Tories pretended that it was 1979 all over again. It wasn't. They eked out a far longer term in office than their record remotely warranted. And 2024 isn't 1974. The country isn't drifting towards the Tories' fundamental worldview - quite the opposite.
Then there's the 2008 financial crisis. The reasons for the banking crisis went to the heart of Thatcherism - but as it hit under a Labour government, the politics of it played out very differently:
The Tories' ideological cult of Thatcherism, combined with a strategic need to oppose New Labour from the Right, meant the Tories either didn't realise or outright ignored that Blair and Brown sought to pursue their aims within a broadly Thatcherite economic model.
Worryingly, some of them have clearly lived through Thatcherism. I think they equate "we need to get the welfare bill down" (essentially by supporting people into work) with neoliberalism.