Labour needs to draw a line under Thatcherism – and Blairism

The harder sections of the media and the Conservative Party tried to make everyone like Baroness Thatcher, the more resistant people came. As the days went on, the harder they tried the more shrill the message, and inevitably the splits in the whole edifice of what had been planned as a quasi-state funeral were there for all to see – and before the event itself took place.  David Cameron’s act in bouncing both the Speaker and Parliament to convene for a special sitting was perhaps his first miscalculation and he and the Tory Party have continued to largely misread the public mood since. In the same way the organisers of the tasteless and often misogynistic street parties to ‘celebrate’ the death of Baroness Thatcher have offended many and effectively personalised the policies of those deeply divisive Tory years into one figure – letting everyone else off the hook.

By common consent, Ed Miliband had a difficult task to perform last week and by common consent he did it well. But in the days since it has become apparent that sections of the British Establishment are trying to re-write history. The wisdom that they want historians to record and people to accept is that Margaret Thatcher somehow ‘saved Britain’. Nothing could be further from the truth, and following the funeral of Margaret Thatcher on Wednesday the Left needs to begin to de-bunk the new mythology, and it needs to do so by finally drawing a line under Thatcherism.

It can begin to do so by focussing on some of the key values and policies that sets the Labour Movement apart from the selfish individualism that has gone before and re-engage with the millions now who are disconnected with politics and our democracy. For one of the more profound reasons for the massive disconnect that has grown up comes as a direct result of the privatisation and marginalisation of public provision. Successive Governments, including those led by Tony Blair, have continued to outsource both decision making and public services and utilities to such a degree that many have begun to ask; what is the point of Parliament and what is the point of Government?

Of course the expenses scandals and the rise of the career politicians has something to do with this process, yet ultimately so much goes back to the progenitors of Monetarism in the Chicago Business School, Friedman, Hayek and their Tory fellow travellers, including Keith Joseph and Nicholas Ridley. It was Ridley who first raised the ambition to reduce the function of local government to annual meetings, held simply to award contracts to service providers. That process is now so advanced, and moving into almost every facet of public service, that Parliament may soon be relegated to doing what Ridley envisaged.

When I first started canvassing for the Labour Party in the late 1970s, people would often say of politicians ‘they are all just in it for themselves’, but without meaning it. But now they do. And they do so for many of the reasons already mentioned, but also because they cannot perceive of a party or a Government that will for instance bring the utilities under proper public control, invest for real jobs and full employment, and bring about what the Labour Party was created to do – the irreversible re-distribution of power and wealth to ordinary working people.

So Labour really needs to head to first base and ask people; what is Government for and what sort of society to do we want to build in the 21^st century, how do we build it and what will you do to help us do it? For Ed Miliband and Labour to be putting full employment at the centre of the party’s plans for Government is a huge and significant step forward, just as is the plan to re-balance the economy, with the assistance of German style investment banks geared to re-building the productive manufacturing base of the economy so destroyed by the Thatcher years.  We need to embark on a massive public housing programme and come to the aid of struggling young people by instituting rent controls, as happens in every major city from Berlin to New York. We need to revitalise childcare provision and work closely with our friends in the trade union movement to give people justice and security at the workplace. We need a new democratic revolution.

But in drawing a line under Thatcherism, Labour will also need to finally draw a line under Blairism – after all, the voters did so some time ago. This may not have appeared so necessary to some until the events of the last few days, But the unhelpful interventions of Tony Blair, Tessa Jowell and others have all the faded grandiloquence of the actions of faded theatre dames, and need a tough response.  As Messrs Blair, Jowell and Blunkett know full well, their interventions are being used to sow discord in Labour’s ranks at a time when the party has never been more at ease with itself, and at a time when the party enjoys a healthy poll lead. For me it is it is interesting to note that those who demanded ‘loyalty’ at any price, or precisely the same who seem incapable of offering it now.