Off Topic The QPR Not 606 Rolling Election Poll

Oh and one more thing, fair play Stan, I can't wait for this election to be done with and I have been trying my very best to avoid it plus all the spin.

Unfortunately the only way to do this would be to go live in a cave, you just can't get away from it so I have been dragged into it more than I had wished.

 

Rather that than that muppet Miliband antwhere near government

 

Fair point, but there are plenty of people in this country (at the lower end of the pay scales) who would prefer a party with a social policy somewhere in their manifesto.

While Thatcher and Cameron may have followed rigid economic principles, their social policies, or lack of them, have been a disaster for millions in this country.

There are many parts of Britain that still haven't recovered from the Thatcher era

 

It seems to me that pretty much all of that which has gone wrong in this country over recent years - housing shortages, rapacious utilities companies, unfettered and unscrupulous banks - can be laid at Thatcher's door. The great sadness for me is that is that successive Labour leaders have sought to emulate Thatcher rather than expose her evil.

 

Margaret Thatcher left office 24 years ago. In the interim we had thirteen years of New Labour. At some point, the left has to own up to its mistakes and its responsibility for the mess they made of the country instead of blaming it on a prime minister from a quarter of a century ago.

 

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Is Stan the 606 David Dimbleby?

 

I think the point Stroller is making, and I would agree with, is that Thatcher changed the landscape totally and successors in Government have simply followed her lead and not tried to reverse much of her 'legacy', Labour, Tory or coalition. If you admire Thatcher (not assumed) you should be happy about that. If you wanted an alternative to Thatcherism Blair doing literally anything (it seems to me) to get into Government and New Labour certainly didn't provide one. Though they fooled a lot of us in the nineties. Describing them as 'the left' is certainly a relative term nowadays, they are not recognisably socialist. The differences between them and the Tories (going on the current manifestos) on the economy, immigration, education, defence, health etc etc are ones of presentation, scale and implementation rather than policy. Balls, if he gets the chance, isn't going to reverse any of Osborne's last budget from what I understand. The only tangible difference is on the EU, which the Tories are disasterously split on.

 

I'm not that old or grey mate, you know that.

 

Chris Evans?

 

Worryingly close, I have the specs and the hair (though I am of course strawberry blonde rather than ginger). Sadly not the cars though.

 

Are you posting in Morse code now Ubes?

 

I think the point Stroller was actually making is that he hated Margaret Thatcher and she's a convenient hook to hang any subsequent failures upon - not least that she can't fight back any more.

Nobody on the left remembers the state of the world when she became Tory leader, then PM in '79. I remember being very worried, even as a child, about the ongoing Cold War, and grew up with the Berlin Wall, the nuclear arms race, and the destruction of Britain's manufacturing industry by the Unions. There were challenges to Britain all over the place, not least in the South Atlantic.

In '91 when she left office, all of these things had, to a lesser or greater degree, been resolved.

I appreciate that some areas of industry were badly treated, however her legacy for me is mostly positive and she was PM during some major changes in my life - leaving school, getting into work, buying my first home, getting married - so it's not a time I look back on with much animosity.

The left do not see that time positively. They focus on mine closures, rioting, milk, etc and prefer to abdicate responsibility for their failure in Government in favour of perpetuating the utterly obsolete and irrelevant 'class divide'.

I am not 100% an admirer of Thatcher, however, there's no doubt that Britain was a better place after her tenure than it was before.

 

Good post. Before Thatcher, Britain had become a basket case economically. The unions that had been a force for good for workers in previous decades began to use their powers for destructive purposes. Many had been infiltrated by confessed communists that wanted to bring industry to its knees (Bill Sir's quote about the Steel Industry) before recreating it in Soviet style. Wilson, Heath, Callaghan had all failed to tackle the problem. Strikes were the first item of BBC TV news - British Leyland for example nosed-dived because of poor industrial relations. Everyone - workers and management - got poorer. Thatcher came in with determination and people got back to work. The living standards for working people and their families rose exponentially. New Labour gained greatly from this legacy, which Blair acknowledged.

There was a downside to Thatcher. People in declining industries got left behind and not enough was done to help them reinvent themselves. Thatcher herself was undone by excess power at the end of her era, just as the unions had been in the '70s.

In the 1970's, the common description of Britain was "the sick man of Europe". I remember well that Brits were paupers in terms of spending power when they travelled on the Continent compared to the French and the Germans. As at today, Britain has the most dynamic economy in Europe, albeit with debt and deficit problems that are common in all Western economies.. My worry is that the anachronistic and nationalistic SNP will wield its influence over a minority Labour Government to turn back the clock. I'd be more than content with a continuation of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition so long as it's clear that financial benefits must filter down to all levels of society and there's a livable level of minimum wage (and to take Quality Passing Rules's point, the genuinely disabled and the genuine work seekers are properly supported).

 

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Well that's probably the end of this thread, even her greatest fans must admit that she is a divisive figure. I and many others lived through those times as well as Goldie and Chaz, and may have different and equally legitimate views. No one is going to change their mind about her now.

In an attempt to divert from what I fear is the inevitable, ponder this scenario:

Labour forms a minority government, with an unofficial (i.e. not coalition that just isn't going to happen) deal with SNP. The time comes for a vote on investment in Trident. Labour has no option but to support, the SNP will vote against. What do the Tories do?
- vote with the government because they too believe in Trident
- use the opportunity to vote with SNP, defeat the government then call a vote of confidence.....which Labour win because the SNP supports them
- abstain, which would ensure the government wins

There are plenty of ways for the Labour to govern as a minority without caving in to the SNP.

This has been a poor campaign for the Tories. On paper everything is in their favour - good economic indicators, the sitting government when people usually dislike change and potential disruption, an oppostition which is easily caricatured, can be blamed for a recession and which has a leader few warm to. Yet they can't put any distance between themselves and Labour. Why is that?

 

Agree the Tories have had a poor campaign to date, Stan. I think Miliband's "We're going to bash the bankers and the energy companies and mansion-dwellers" has had an understandable resonance. In practice, if he gets in, I don't think it will be anything like that easy.

The Tories would never vote down Trident or risk being accused of opportunism by threatening to do so.

I note your confidence that Labour could govern without the SNP. I can't see how, unless the Lib Dems do better than expected and throw their lot in with Labour. Support from the Greens and Plaid Cymru is miniscule. Even then, the Tories, possibly with UKIP and Northern Ireland MP's support, would ensure that Labour would limp so that, in reality, Labour will have to do deals with the SNP to get legislation through. What will the SNP demand in return? It will be self-serving for Scottish Nationalism.

 

Might Stroller be permitted to speak for himself?

My point was, as Stan identified, to bemoan the fact that post-Thatcher Labour governments have not attempted to reverse the worst of her legacy and that the current Labour offering is not much more than Tory-lite.

I will resist the temptation to expand on my views about Thatcher, as this thread is about the 2015 election not the 1979 one.

 

Apologies for using your moniker when applying the general left-leaning view. But your response above does add weight to my point about the good things that happened being overlooked/forgotten in favour of what you term 'the worst of her legacy'. Out of interest and for balance, what is your opinion of the 'best' of her legacy?