Thatcher

A couple of weeks ago I complained about the lack of balance in the obituaries for Hugo Chavez. Mainly I was frustrated, since I wanted to learn more and am curious and unsure about how his legacy will develop in time.

 

Now an even bigger figure has died. Given that her age in power was a generation ago and the perspective that enables, I was again disappointed at the lack of balance. But this time I knew a lot more already, as I was in my 20’s in Thatcher’s Britain. I think the only time I have voted in UK elections has been against Maggie, so she was a dominant force in my formative era. So this time I have my own opinion.

 

We are all to a great extent shaped by context, and my main complaint with all the obituaries is that this seems to be too often overlooked. I can highlight four major examples. The first two mitigate some of the negatives written about her, the last two challenge the positives.

 

First, it is true that Maggie presided over a horrific recession with three million unemployed, but we need to accept she came to power at the height of the Iran crisis and the consequent oil shock. Oil prices shot up several hundred percent for the second time in a decade and all global economies suffered. This was not primarily Maggie’s recession, it was Khomeini’s.

 

Second, her approach to organised labour was brutal, but a middle path was not available to her. In the 1970’s, the TUC was more powerful than any party, and many union leaders had aims and approaches wholly incompatible with any concept of a competitive economy. This had destroyed her three immediate predecessors. When people say she should have negotiated with the miners and navigated a more gentle path, they forget how Britain was then. Scargill simply had to be defeated, and brutally, whatever the damage to ordinary families.

 

Third, the stunning UK recovery in Nigel Lawson’s time as chancellor had less to do with Thatcher’s economic policies and most to do with North Sea Oil. For the only time in the entire century (and perhaps ever into the future) the UK moved into a natural surplus position as an economy during the 1980’s. This created unprecedented opportunity to reshape the economy – which in my opinion Maggie tragically squandered.

 

Finally is the pervasive myth that somehow Maggie and Ronnie defeated communism. Communism defeated communism, it collapsed from its own unsustainability. One man, Michael Gorbachev, enabled this to happen in a way that avoided carnage, and hopefully will eventually be lauded for this. Maggie and Ronnie (then George senior) just happened to be around at the time. And they squandered the unique opportunity created.

 

Maggie was a fantastic politician. She had a wonderful combination of appearing certain and principled while in fact always calculating her next move smartly. The outward certainty meant she could take a brave stance, communicate it, and bring enough people with her. She was fearless and peerless. The command she had over her party was breath taking – remember those standing ovations? She somehow got bounced into the Falklands crisis, but while all her peers would have dithered she acted, indifferent to her legacy (the claim that somehow the war was contrived to turn around her poll ratings is pretty ludicrous, though the turnaround was indeed a direct consequence). This apparent certainty also enabled her to defeat Scargill.

 

Yet she was no hothead, there was political calculation in abundance. She was opportunistic in becoming leader. She used her party platform smartly. She fed the voters she needed enough of the policies they wanted to get her elected. She chose which unions to take on, and when. I believe she would have seen the poll tax through and been elected again in 1992 – it was Europe that she could not finesse within her party and which defeated her.

 

Apart from her overall positive service to labour relations, she also initiated two wonderful policies, combining vote-winning with genuine social and economic benefits. The first was the sale of council (socially owned) houses to their tenants, an idea so brilliant that we wondered why no one had thought of it before. The second was privatisation of state assets. This policy was brave, sound, vote-winning, and has stood the test of time and been exported around the world, usually with positive effect.

 

She had some disastrous policies too. I would highlight the planning changes that led to out of town superstores. These have turned out to change British towns in bad ways, making them resemble US ones rather than, for example, Dutch ones. Even in the prosperous South, high streets now are sad relics dominated by bookies and thrift shops, communities are dispersed to soulless suburbs, and everyone drives, to the detriment of public transport. The rest of Europe did not make these mistakes, and the result feels permanent and tragic. And it started with Maggie.

 

While she was a consummate politician, I am in the camp that would condemn her as a stateswoman. Her politics and her context gave her an opportunity in the late 1980’s to reshape Britain, building on the privatisation success and defeat of the destructive side of trade unionism. She had the space (from politics) and the money (from oil) to do what she wanted. How did she use this opportunity? Disastrously.

 

She destroyed local government, a paradox really from someone who professed devolving power from the state. Only now I am spending time in the USA do I realise how important state and local government is to foster innovation and enterprise. Instead, enterprise came to be associated almost completely with finance, in Maggie’s share owning democracy. Talented kids in the UK had always gravitated to professions and finance rather than business, to parasitic rather than creative activities, and Maggie accelerated this. Where are Britain’s great companies nowadays, outside the fields of consumption (Tesco) or finance? This lost opportunity from the golden age of oil may have condemned Britain for generations. Look at the underlying economic statistics nowadays on Britain – productivity, innovation, balance of trade are all disastrous. This started with Maggie.

 

She had the chance to invest in infrastructure, in education, in decent housing, in equality of opportunity, European trade relations and in the benefits of immigration. Her scorecard in all these areas is bleak. I don’t advocate old style industrial policy, but instead promoting these drivers of growth. She successfully cleared the decks of the old way, but put nothing useful in its place, only greedy parasitic bankers.

 

Socially there were also missed chances. Another paradox, as a woman she pushed forward but also pulled back female emancipation. She appointed few women, and did little to promote good child care or pre-schooling. Tolerance of homosexuality was held back, and bigotry against immigrants allowed to build. Criminal justice policy reduced to throwing more and more people into jail. The Daily Mail still talks for much of Britain, and it is generally an unedifying voice. This started with Thatcher. It did not have to be this way.

 

But if the domestic legacy is a sad lost opportunity, the international one is even more tragic. Thatcher came to power in a bipolar world, and it was understandable, even if ultimately indefensible, to act as a cold warrior then. She felt let down by Mugabe, so tacitly backed apartheid in South Africa for too long. Big men on “our side” were tolerated elsewhere, and the Iran Iraq war almost promoted as a dream scenario, despite the human cost, and indeed the ultimate reckoning to the Western reputation we are now facing. She never embraced Europe, but at least stayed in, no doubt as a quid pro quo with Ronnie (something she could not reconcile at the end).

 

Then came Gorbachev and the collapse of communism, and a glorious opportunity. But Maggie was stuck in a win-lose mentality and could not help to forge a better world, unlike for example Helmut Kohl. The chance to truly promote democracy, to reduce weapons and military influence (especially covert operations) was cast aside. Russia was subjected to inappropriate economic orthodoxy with lingering catastrophic effects. Admittedly, the US had a greater role in this calumny, but Thatcher had earned some influence yet failed to exercise this in any positive direction. We are all still paying the price.

 

Her final failure was in her strong suit, politics. She did little to promote talent in her own party, and left behind a rudderless ship that became unelectable for a generation, with her stirring things in the background. She did nothing to improve parliament or the constitution, and arguably made Britain less governable after her demise, especially with the shocking regional profiles of political parties now existing. Sensible discussion of coalition, criminal justice, immigration and, especially, of Europe, remains almost impossible even now.

 

The way she dominated her cabinet led to my favourite Thatcher joke, from Spitting Image. The scene is a restaurant she enters with her cabinet for a meal, and the conversation between Maggie and the head waiter goes as follows:

What would you like to order, madam?

Steak.

How would you like it, madam?

Raw.

And, madam, what about the vegetables?

What? Oh, they’ll just take the same as me.

 

So, in my opinion, Thatcher was a great politician who achieved more change than most, some of it necessary and some brilliant. But ultimately she failed as a stateswoman as comprehensively as she succeeded as a politician. And it is in stateswomanship where the legacy really lasts. And, for me at least, it stinks.