And if you thought the Tories had changed…
Then think again. Have a look here. It’s a leaked Tory strategy document, and it confirms everything doubters thought about Cameron’s cuddly image: it’s a sham. They want to be, “as radical in social reform as Mrs. Thatcher was in economic reform.”
That tells us two things about the modern Conservative Party, at least. The first is that they still haven’t got over their past. Rather than setting themselves modern standards and aspirations, they’re measuring themselves by the past, in the grisly shape of Maggie Thatcher. They’re looking back, not forward.
The second, perhaps more tenuously, is that they want their policies to be like Thatcher’s. Think what they were, on social terms: bullying single parents, Whitehousian prudery, the removal of whichever props for the unfortunate she could get away with electorally.
The rhetoric is certainly there. Check the last sentences of the last two paragraphs. They’re going to have, “properly enforced, tough and effective laws” - presumably whether they work or not, by the sound of it. So, fascism on drugs, the victimisation of young people, yadda yadda. Remind you of anyone? Yes, that’s right, Mrs. T.
And the second sentence? They’ll be “reducing demands on the state,”* and ensuring the country, “live[s] within our means,” and making, “our economy strong and competitive for the long term.” Remind you of anyone? Chyeah. Thatcher, and possibly John Hutton. The demand to reduce demand on the state is straight out of her speeches: she “rolled back the frontiers of the state,” in her Bruges speech.
Do they not realise that we’ve got “poverty, inequality and stalled social mobility” - their words - because of her legacy? I doubt it.
*By upping police numbers, and consequently spending with them? Oh, wait, of course. They’ll be scrapping benefits for single mothers at the same time, as they’re clearly “a threat to marriage.” It’s what they wanted to do, and the rhetoric isn’t changing.
Saying that you want to be “as radical as” does not mean the same as “do the same thing as”.
Perhaps not. But the subsequent rhetoric on rolling back the state and beefing up the economy says it for them.
Saying that you want to be “as radical as” does not mean the same as “do the same thing as”.
Well Tories aren’t the sort that should be trusted with any form of radicalism, as far as I’m concerned.