Thatcher, a political realist’

Thatcher, a political realist’


Published: Guardian
Thursday, June 30, 2016

Niall Ferguson,

Odyssey Editions, 2013,



Review by Kevin Baldeosingh

Although an extended essay rather than a book proper, economic historian Niall Fergurson’s defence of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died in 2013, is an especially useful corrective in the wake of the Brexit vote which has had the chattering classes chatting so much in the past few days. Additionally, there are hints here as to how T&T might tackle its present economic malaise.

“Above all, however, Margaret Thatcher was right about Europe,” Ferguson writes, asserting that she was correct to back the Single European Act of 1986, which facilitated free trade on the continent, but equally right in opposing the single European currency.

Thatcherism is now a metaphor for bad governance, yet it is a metaphor which owes more to ideology than to either historical or economic facts. Ferguson notes that in the late 1970s Britain was in a dire state. “Nothing worked, The trains were always late. The payphones were always broken...The inflation rate...was 27 per cent,” he recalls. The fault, as with Venezuela now, was socialist policies.

“As early as 1975 she had come with a wonderful line about the Labour Party: ‘They’ve got the usual Socialist disease—they’ve run out of other people’s money’,” writes Ferguson.

He argues that Thatcherism was “a painful but necessary change of policy regime” needed to tackle chronic inflation, industrial unrest, and unemployment. And it worked.

“The gap between the UK and its European and North American peers had been enormous in the post-war decades. It was in the 1980s that the gap disappeared.”

Why it is, then, that three years after her death and a quarter-century after her Prime Ministership ended with her forced resignation, Thatcher, who during her premiership was called “The Iron Lady,” continues to be perceived negatively. Ferguson hints at a likely factor when he notes that, “most intellectuals detested Margaret Thatcher,” so it is those voices which dominate the discourse.

Perhaps more importantly, though, he argues that, “naive economists look at the wrong indicators when trying to assess the Thatcher achievement. They fail to see that the project to restore British capitalism should be measured by capitalist, not socialist standards.”

But what about Thatcher’s alleged racist policies in respect to apartheid and immigration? Ferguson provides a more nuanced take, arguing that Thatcher was a political realist which is why she didn’t support sanctions against South Africa, but, “at her meetings with PW Botha and his successor FW de Klerk, she urged them to free Nelson Mandela.”

And, Ferguson adds, “When she finally met with Mandela himself, she urged him in turn not to go down the road of nationalisation of the economy.” The lesson of Zimbabwe should be clear here, but isn’t to many people.

Ferguson also notes that, although her administration made it harder for would-be immigrants to marry their way in or secure work permits and ended the claim to UK citizenship of former colonial subjects, the tide of migration turned on Thatcher’s watch because her economic policies made Britain attractive to immigrants once again.

Thatcher’s reputation, then, disproves the old saw that you can’t argue with success.

www.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/2016-06-30/...cal-realist%E2%80%99

Niall Ferguson is an evil dude.

This is the usual "winter of discontent" mythologising. At the time, the New Economics Foundation, which surveyed locals across the country, called the mid 1970s the happiest period for Brits since 1945. There were major advances in sexual equality, equal pay acts, social inequality decreased, and lots of things were introduced like domestic violence acts, matrimony acts, child benefits etc etc. Then you had the art's scene: Britain in the 1970s was at the cutting edge in film, fashion, design and music.

Then, in the mid 1970s, the Bank of England slashed its credit control rules. For the first time ever, the Bank began supporting massive lending, resulting in an inflation and credit boom. By 1975 inflation went up to about 25 percent. The banks and government then blamed the economic problems on "unions demanding more pay", and later used this scapegoat to further deregulate the financial sector and to legalize forms of speculation. The modern, British banking sector was born here.

This was also the first time the IMF hijacked a superpower. Like it did to Greece and Ukraine recently, in 1976 the IMF blackmailed the UK into giving it control of domestic policy, in exchange for a 2.3 billion dollar bailout loan. In exchange, the UK had to roll back the public sector and privatise all its assets

THEN Thatcher came into power. She didn't "save the country from inflation" (she actually plunged it into its deepest recession), but rather inherited a country in which inflation was already going down. She was also lucky to inherit the benefits of investments the previous government had set into motion: they invested in North Sea oil, and she came into power when the oil wells started raking in big profits.

One of the chief tenets of socialism is the abolition of money. Socialism cannot "run out of money" because socialism with money is capitalism; a "gooey, touchy-feely" capitalism, but capitalism nevertheless, with all the usual contradictions.


And yet Britain doesn't make or export much. Only 10 percent of its GDP is manufacturing. The rest is service sector BS and banking (the largest financial sector in the world). Indeed, Britain's chief export is fiat money. It's a hub for global loansharks. This is not really something to be proud of.


Except capitalism's standards lead to the breaking of capitalism's standards.

Capitalists exalt "laissez faire" policies. They want everything deregulated, they want businesses to fail when they fail, and they don't want bailouts. Survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog. Let the invisible hand do what it must, they believe.

Except that never happens. Capitalism leads to monopoly leads to powerful cartels leads to business taking over government leads to businesses enacting policies leads to protectionism, be this protectionism the removal of legislation, or the implementing of legislation.

Thatcher hated Big Government, yet ignored the fact that capitalism always leads to Bigger Government. Indeed, capitalism inherently cannot function without a state to guarantee markets.

Review by Kevin Baldeosingh