The other night I dined with Michael Jennings, and the question arose between us about how the political atmosphere of Britain now compared with the atmosphere of Britain in slightly earlier times, the most obvious comparison being between now and the time just before – and at the start of – the Thatcher era. Whether Michael himself asked about how 1979 and thenabouts compared to now I cannot recall. Probably not, because in 1979 he was a young boy living in Australia. But I found myself trying to answer this question, because I believe that the comparison is rather intriguing.
Economically, Britain then and Britain now are in a rather similar mess, created by similar policies. The government was then, and is now, spending more than it can comfortably raise from us in taxes. Then as now, international conditions had reduced what the government could comfortably spend, but the government found it hard to react rationally. So much, briefly, for the similarities. But the differences are huge. These differences are in the party politics of it all. In the late seventies and right through the nineteen eighties, huge numbers of Labour supporters (I met and spoke with many like this) refused to accept that there had even been a problem. As I seem to recall Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan saying at the time: “Crisis? What crisis?” Before the 1979 general election, many Labourites couldn’t see what the fuss was all about, and after it they were amazed. Labour’s only problem, as they saw it, was convincing the electorate that there was no drastic problem and thus that there was no need to vote for the only drastic answer then being offered to the voters: Thatcher. What was the problem with just expanding the state to solve all problems, real and imagined, in the same old style? The basic atmosphere in the Labour Party was, compared to now, relaxed and complacent, both before and after the 1979 election. Before it, they said: the voters won’t go crazy. After the election they said: the voters will soon realise what a horror Thatcher is and they will recover their wits. Soon, it will be back to political business as usual.
Conservatives, on the other hand, were, towards the end of the seventies and throughout the early eighties plunged into pessimism. They were pessimistic about the direction the country was heading, and even when elected, they were then pessimistic about their ability to do much about it. They too were amazed at the result of the 1979 election, but as far as they were concerned, that was when their big problems really began. Only those Conservatives who loved having won an election and bugger the country (admittedly quite a lot of them and admitted the loudest ones) were truly happy.
Conservatives then mostly believed that the voters, although angry at the consequences of Britain’s economic decline, would be similarly angry about any steps that might actually reverse that decline and would refuse to go on voting for any such corrections just as soon as they started to experience them. Unemployment of a million or more was politically unthinkable (on that point there was agreement right across the political spectrum), because it was assumed that the voters simply would not stand for it. For all on the left, such large scale unemployment was horrific and unnecessary. For many on the right, it was also horrific, maybe in some sense necessary, but whether necessary or not, politically impossible because the voters would not stomach it. Instead, Conservatives feared that the voters would just continue voting angrily, first this way and then that way but always against the government, against the deepening misery of living in a permanently declining country but not in any way that would permit such decline to be reversed. Britain had, in short, become ungovernable, and would thus decline all the more precipitately. Many Conservatives then lived in a mental universe in which the voters would simply vote the country to perdition and never stop. I am not exaggerating. Optimism, among Conservatives, was in very short supply in the late seventies and early eighties. Thatcherites thought that Thatcherism was worth a try, however risky, and given the alternative. Anti-Thatcherite Conservatives thought Thatcherism futile and doomed and that its doom should be accepted with dignity.
But the economy recovered. It at least ceased nosediving. And as far as the Conservatives were concerned (egged on by the voters with two more amazing Thatcher landslides) this economic recovery was a genuinely accomplished fact, accomplished by them.
The atmosphere amongst Labourites also changed. They realised that the damn voters would never be persuaded that there had been no problem to which Thatcher was any sort of solution. They just wouldn’t be told. So, they would have to be told something different. Labour had, said new leader Tony Blair, turned over a new leaf. It was now the party of prudent economic management, and – yes – tax cuts. Under Labour, taxes would never be increased beyond what the country could afford. So when the Conservatives pissed on the recovery they had themselves allowed, Labour stood ready to harvest the votes. But Labour has now broken that promise and here we are again, in much the same kind of mess we were in in 1979.
But there are also huge differences. The optimism and the pessimism now are distributed about the landscape very differently. The travails of Mr Brown have been much discussed, here and elsewhere. That Mr Brown is now stubbornly trying to concoct an argument to the effect that he is the answer to the very problem which he has spent the previous decade saying that he had personally abolished for ever, and that his attempt is doomed, and that the Labour Party even now, still, allows this slow motion train wreck of a government to continue its ruination of the country, is now the dominant political narrative. All of which has put the Labour Party in a state of far deeper gloom than any it was experiencing in the seventies and eighties. By the eighties Labour’s Plan A had failed, in everyone else’s eyes but not in their own, and then they were able to contrive a Plan B, in the form of Tony Blair. Now, there is no imaginable Labour Plan C. So, back to Plan A again? A reheated version of Plan B? The political wilderness awaits. And I haven’t even mentioned the Scottish Nationalists. I have had a running debate with Michael Jennings about how long the voters will remember what a shambles the current Labour government is. He says, based on Australian experience, that the voters will soon forget. I say not. Obviously it could be wishful thinking on my part, but I say that the Labour Party is now quite right to be deeply pessimistic about its future.
Far less discussed is how very much more optimistic the Conservatives now are about their ability to correct things, as soon as they become the next government. After all, they have cleaned this kind of mess up before, well within living memory, and they can do it again. In fact, when you consider that their last act before the wilderness swallowed them up in 1997 was to allow a recovery from the mess that they themselves had re-made under Chancellor Nigel Lawson, you realise that they have recently presided over two economic recoveries. It’s not rocket science. You cut spending, and borrowing, and tax rates, and wait for things to pick up, which they will. You don’t cut any of these things nearly as much as loony libbos like me – and you? – would like, but you cut them enough to do some good, and this will do some good. New jobs will materialise, provided only that people are clobbered less savagely with high interest rates and high taxes and negative equity than they are being clobbered now.
Oh, there are differences of – shall we say? – emphasis between this Conservative front bencher and that one, between what David Cameron says to one audience, and what he says a fortnight later to a different audience. But these divisions and uncertainties are as nothing beside the gloom in which the Conservatives were sunk at the corresponding political moment last time this particular story played itself out. When Thatcher did her thing, she was talking about rolling back the state and reversing the decline of the country, in peacetime, for the first time anyone could remember, and then, very approximately, she did it. Extraordinary! All Cameron needs to do is repeat the dose. And this time around, there is widespread Conservative confidence that the voters will vote and keep on voting for whatever needs doing. Indeed, the average Conservative has believed for some time that the voters are, if anything, rather more committed to financial prudence than Mr Cameron seems to be. As the economic state of the country worsens, fears that Mr Cameron will just carry on taxing-and-spending recede. He simply won’t be able to do this, whatever he may personally have in mind to do. Meanwhile, commentators who have got used to saying such things over the last few years are saying that the Conservatives now need new ideas. No they don’t. The fewer new ideas they adopt, and hence new government bureaucracies they unleash, the better. The only remotely new ideas the Conservatives need now concern just who to fire from the excessively bloated public sector, when, and in what order.
By the way, Labourites need to be careful about painting Cameron as Thatcher The Second. By the time the election comes around, that will probably be what pretty much the entire country other than them and their dwindling rabble of supporters will have decided they want. Labour risks doing the Conservatives’ campaigning for them.
Because, guess what. When you are firing people, the last thing you need to do in the years and months before you fire them is to conduct an elaborate public discussion in a loud voice about exactly who you are going to fire and exactly why. No, what you do when firing people is arrange matters in such a way that the first time it seriously dawns on the unlucky ones who are to be fired that they are to be fired is when they are being fired. One moment things are fine, and whoever they are are a group of much valued public servants doing an important job in difficult circumstances. And the next moment … chop. Pack your personal belongings in these boxes here and be out on the pavement within the hour. That’s how you fire people. No wonder Cameron is not anxious to discuss his plans in any sort of public detail. But this is what his plans will have to consist of, and we all know it.
The pessimism of the Conservatives in 1979 proved excessive. Their optimism now could prove just as wrong-headed. Events favoured the Conservatives in the early eighties, presenting them, for example, with a small war that they were able to win. Events may not be so kind to Mr Cameron. But those will be other stories.
I don’t know how old Michael is, but I came to London from Australia in 1980, in my late twenties. In the years and decades before that we, in Oz, were well aware of the UK’s condition, and the mood of pessimism about the countries future was known and recognized everywhere.
It was nigh on universally believed that the UK was stuffed, and nothing could be done to save it.
Please do not use the word’s ‘ideas’ and ‘Cameron’ in the same paragraph 🙂
OK, it’s Monday and I tend to cynicism on a Monday, but:
How many public spending extravaganzas can Cameron cut without falling foul of EU regulations?
Given the much more litigious atmosphere of the country compared to the eighties, and the plethora of ‘human rights’ these days, can the tories cut anything without ending up in court?
Since the majority of conservative politicians, like their labour counterparts, are professional pols, can David afford to cut any government departments without fatally eroding his support? After all, they’re all in it to be ministers, at least, and if there are fewer cabinet posts around, then keeping the parliamentary rabble in line becomes that much more difficult.
Since the plethora of semi-govenmental and non-governmental commissions are a great source of jobs for the boys, (thus keeping party backers happy), will Dave be able to wield the axe aggressively?
Have you tried sacking a public ‘service’ worker lately? If the tories sack a few on their first day in office, the financial savings will be felt some time around their third electoral term.
I could go on, (and on and on), but like I said, it’s Monday.
Good comment, Mr Micklethwait, save for two little points:
1. you are a tad too optimistic about Mr Cameron’s lack of zest for doing things with somebody else’s money: just thinking of all the Green policies he wants to implement should be enough to cure you of that;
2. Do not forget 1992: the voters might get cold feet yet.
Given the scope of this piece and BM’s insights, similar observations on the comparative compositions (and changes in social and economic makeup) of the British electorate – in a then and now format – could be enlightening.
How about that?
One of those years that stick in my memory.
Got married.
Bought this house.
Voted Maggie.
No wonder the Labourites were complacent.
Things had been much worse than 79.
Three day weeks, price and wages controls.
Power cuts daily.
Money controls that prevented you leaving the country for more than a fortnight or you ran out of money…
Like the Democrats now, with Palin
Old Labour never saw Maggie coming either.
Not in their Meta-context.
Very interesting post, thanks.
The problem, I think, for the Tories is that a lot of young people who don’t really remember the Thatcher era have been brainwashed into believing that ‘Thatcherism’ represents greed and selfishness. The word is abused on a daily basis in the same way that Americans abuse the word ‘liberal.’
Thus any time any Tories suggest any similar policies, a great many people wave their arms about and shout ‘Thatcherism’ and a huge bloc of people cringe reflexively. Just from the way the word is used in any forum leaves you with the impression that it was something akin to Franco’s Spain.
So the question is, how can you deliver properly conservative policies while avoiding the labelling?
The other alternative of course would just be for them to stand up, say ‘yes, this is Thatcherism Mk II because it worked before and it’ll work again’ and remember that it did get her elected three times in a row. I often wonder if the Tories themselves are suffering from some sort of guilt-trip with regard to that era, a sort of ‘my god, weren’t we cruel’ mindset.
People say things are bad now but the late 70’s and early 80’s were so much worse. As RAB has pointed out 3 day weeks, no electricity, no bread, no rubbish collections, no burials etc etc. The UK an international laughing stock with no influence on anything. The country was run by the unions who were determined to bankrupt everyone.
The early 80’s Maggie had to give the country some really tough medicine because the effects of the Labour mismanagement carried over for several years just like the effects of the last conservative govt carried over for the first few years of the Blair era.
I remember paying a mortgage rate of 16% a few months after I bought my first house in 83. I remember trying to get a job in 1980 when 3 mill were unemployed and quite a few of them were looking for a job. (We have more unemployed now but they are paid to stay at school or go to polytechnics, er.. universities)
I am not doing the lick road clean with tonque sketch here, sure its tough now, and the problems are different but it is not so bad as the 70’s. Not that I am saying I am happy about it. I really resent all those grasping creeps in Westminster. As the devil says …king hellski
It does still amaze me how short peoples’ memories are, and how much people are still influenced by the MSM.
My parents generation is almost entirely internet illiterate and only get their news, opinions, ‘meta context’ from the MSM. Journos need to stir the pot every day with new news, or they can’t peddle their garbage, and pols need to try and keep us all scared of something or we would all realise that we don’t actually need them at all.
But younger generations are just as bad. The other day I was waiting in a hotel reception and got chatting to the receptionist – a man in his late 40’s like myself – he tried to convince me that the problems in the UK would be solved if most of the major industries were re-nationalised. This was not a political activist talking. This was a man repeating things his friends and neighbours had been saying. Democracy is doomed when half the electorate are incapable of rational thought, have no memories and uncritically accept the same old socialist claptrap over and over again.
Nick, I think one of the problems is that nationalised industries theoretically _should_ be superior solutions, in some circumstances – they just never are.
It is very easy to see why the average person would say ‘why do we need competition in the domestic gas market – it’s all the same stuff, it comes through the same pipes, it’s all bought on the same market.’
The reality of nationalised companies is, of course, the same bureuacratic nightmare that plagues local councils and schools, union dominance, total stupidity, etc. As you’ve said, if you haven’t lived through the reality then the theory is quite attractive.
Also quite a few of these ‘privatised’ companies are quite happy to bank their profits and then go running to the government for handouts to build new power stations saying that the long-term return capital investments required are ‘totally unpalatable to their shareholders.’ Can’t have your cake and eat it, boys.
Did not the three-day week occur in 1974 rather than 1979 or another part of the late 1970s?
Best regards
The biggest difference from 1979 is that then, we had Mrs. Thatcher waiting in the wings with the grit and determination to at least try to sort things out.
Now we have “call me Dave” who promises that he won’t change anything much.
Doomed.
Quite right Nigel. I fear that my original post has been misread.
The point I was making, was that the reason that Labourites were complacent, was because despite the strikes etc, things were actually a bit better in 79 than in the early to mid 70s.
I see things differently Brian – although this will not come as a huge schock to you.
In the late 1970’s everyone accepted that there was big government – they did not agree about whether this was a good thing or bad thing, but at least they agreed on the basic facts.
Government had very high taxation, spending and regulations.
Today there is very high taxation, spending and regulations.
But many people (not just a few freaks) do NOT accept this.
In fact it is a common opinion that “New Labour” is obessed with “the market”.
That all of Britain is driven by a mad faith in free market ideology (“A point of view” on Sunday compared our supposed fanatical free market Britain with heroin addiction, and NO the B.B.C. would not have said this back in the late 1970,s).
There is a big move in ideology in Britain.
But it has been to the left.
People (many people) now refuse to accept even the basic reality that we live in a big government country.
It is the same in the United States – with many people (including “leading economists” talking about “laissez faire” “libertarian” President Bush).
But in Britain it is worse.
Labour (the party of the left) has been in power for more than 11 years (and Mr Major was in office before then) – yet many people (I repeat, many people) now hold that “big business” controls everything, and/or that we live in an ultra free market.
This was not generally believed in 1979.
I can not see a way back from this state of opinion.
If people believe that Mr Brown is a free market person (and this is the problem) then they may believe in elves and that the world is flat (and so on).
In short we may be dealing with large sections of the population (and people in powerful positions – not people in cardboard boxes) who are insane.
Mr Cameron wishes to win the next election – he has no opinions (either good or bad).
If chanting “I am a teapot” and doing a strange dance is what works that may be what we will see.
The problem is as follows:
If the Conservative party wins the next election how does it do anything worth doing?
As there is no mandate for free market reform – as so many people believe we live in an ultra free market with this being the problem.
I know such a belief is insane – but it is a common one, that was the point of my previous comment. The lunatics are not in the madhouse, they are controlling many of the institutions (from the universities to the media – they are even well represented in the supposedly conservative newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph).
“By the way”.
Millions of people being unemployed for years in the early 1980s was NOT needed.
It was due to a failure to clear the labour market, a rigged labour market that meant that wages did not decline even in the face of the worst recession in the Western World.
And a recession on this scale was not inevitable either – it was caused, partly, by the large tax increase after 1979. A tax increase that was in turn caused by accepting the public sector pay deals of the outgoing labour government.
“To rip up the deals would have meant a return to the winter of discontent” – and such a fight was bound to happen sooner or later, better to fight at once with a fresh mandate.
The failure to reform the labour market was due to James Prior (a disgusting man), who did not wish to take on the unions.
But it was also due to the person who appointed him Employment Secretary.
“But Mrs T. had to do it – politically”.
Perhaps – but it was still a wicked thing to do.
Wicked because it led to millions of people being left on the scrap heap, and because it led to the decline of what was left of British manufacturing industry (which could only have been saved by taking on the unions at once – not after years of delay).
A nation like Britain has to be based on manufacturing industry.
Trying to base a nation of almost sixty million people on financial services simply will not work. The purpose of financial services is (basically) to take real savings (income from work that people choose not to consume) and invest them in productive industry. The productive industry has to be base (apart from in a very small population country).
The purpose is not to take government generated credit money and “invest” it either in personal borrowing (for consumption – consumption that is never going to be paid for by production) or in complex ponzi schemes.
None of this was ever Mrs Thatcher’s intention.
It is the way the thing has turned out – and is only celebrated by the “Economist” and other fools.
Any thoughts on whether manufacturing can be revived in Britain?
M – in theory yes.
But do I have any idea how to make lower government spending, lower taxes and less regulations (which involves getting out of the E.U.) “practical politics” in Britain?
No – sadly I do not.
I flatter myself that I can speak well – but how do I convince people who think that Britain is a example of an ultra free market?
I suppose the only way is the truth.
Tell them again and again about the size and scope of the state – and explain it with the aid of attractive tools.
Such as the simple (but effective) colour bar charts and pie charts Brian Walden used on the old “Weekend World” show (before it was taken over and went over to the same talking heads format that all political shows seem to have).
A conversation over “what is to be done” (Lenin or whoever) is only useful when people have a certain base of factual information.
M – in theory yes.
But do I have any idea how to make lower government spending, lower taxes and less regulations (which involves getting out of the E.U.) “practical politics” in Britain?
No – sadly I do not.
I flatter myself that I can speak well – but how do I convince people who think that Britain is a example of an ultra free market?
I suppose the only way is the truth.
Tell them again and again about the size and scope of the state – and explain it with the aid of attractive tools.
Such as the simple (but effective) colour bar charts and pie charts Brian Walden used on the old “Weekend World” show (before it was taken over and went over to the same talking heads format that all political shows seem to have).
A conversation over “what is to be done” (Lenin or whoever) is only useful when people have a certain base of factual information.
Heavy manufacturing cannot be revived anywhere in the EU where there’s no organic capacity.
India and China have insanely huge installed capacity, vast exceptions to antipollution laws and a virtually unlimited supply of unbelievably cheap unskilled labour, very cheap skilled labour and a lot of native engineers/draftsmen/etc.
The USA has a large manufacturing base and a government that’s quite prepared to support it with tariffs and special arrangements.
Mexico has a bit of both.
Why even talk of reviving it? A lot of what we made was total crap and wholeheartedly shunned for imports the moment they became available! Mass-production British cars were _never_ anything apart from a bad joke and our huge shipbuilding industry was mostly carried over from the vast navy we kept reinforcing right up to the end of WWII. The situation was caused by a completely uncontrollable labour movement which was helped along handily by the fact that during the 60s and 70s (and well into the 80s) a huge section of the British government, civil service and media (early BBC newscasts are comical) were total caricatures of toffs, complete with etonian accents and fat cigars. I always remember the line in Spycatcher when Greengrass is being interviewed before joining the service: ‘did you ever vote Labour?’
I find it hard to imagine a more divided society.
With automation the “cheap labour” argument is now weaker than it has ever been.
And in any case British manufacturing led the world when British wages were the highest in the world – so the argument just does not stand up.
But the argument about taxes and regulations does stand up – and it certainly does not help the “environment” to produce goods thousands of miles away (because regulations and taxes and government borrowing have forced manufacturing out) and then ship it here.
I am all in favour of free trade – Sir Dudley North rocks (or whatever). But this is government action (over a very long period of time) forceing production out of the country.
“Why be concerned?”
Because a nation of almost 60 million people can not live by “financial services” (especially financial services that are often just a load of Ponzi schemes).
“The Swiss do”
Switzerland has a population of about six to seven millon – and it does NOT.
Actually Swiss manufacturing is in a much better state than British manufacturing (not that this is a hard standard to beat).
Oh and yes – Swiss wages are higher.