Each month the Young Fabians send out the Candidates network e-debate. The email provides a platform for Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidates to spark debate amongst Young Fabians members. The Candidates Network e-debate will focus on one of the big issues of the month.
Over the last month two issues – MPs expenses and the future of the Labour Party, have dominated the news. However, in the face of political manoeuvering and talk of duck houses, an important political anniversary went almost unnoticed. 30 years ago last month Margaret Thatcher first came to power. This month’s e-debate discussed her legacy. Below is a contribution from James Green, Young Fabians Candidates Network Officer and PPC for Cheltenham.
Before stepping into the House of Commons chamber to deliver their maiden speech, newly elected MPs are confronted with a defining choice. For decades the statues of Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and Lloyd George have stood commandingly in Members Lobby. Tradition has it that rubbing the foot of your party’s famous former leader brings with it two attributes that every politician yearns for – luck and legacy.
Two years ago a new statue was unveiled in the Members Lobby. Portraying a living politician, it broke with Parliamentary convention. Perhaps that’s fitting. Margaret Thatcher was anything but conventional. A person who in office, just as in bronze, stood outside the party mainstream. Her statue serves as a pertinent reminder that she is, and likely will always be, a permanent fixture of British political life.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 victory. 30 years on and her legacy remains as bitterly contested as ever. For some she is the ‘milk-snatcher’ who decimated British manufacturing and left millions on the scrapheap. For others she is the ‘Iron Lady’ who, through perseverance and sheer strength of character, dragged Britain from the depths of industrial strife to the heights of global power and influence. Whatever you may think of her one thing can’t be denied – Thatcher was a transformative force in British politics.
Yet almost symbolically, the anniversary of Thatcher’s rise to power has coincided with the systemic failure of the economic orthodoxy that she pioneered. Thatcher’s dogged, almost fundamentalist, belief in the ability of markets to correct themselves, has been dramatically undermined by recent events. The ideologically driven deregulation of the banking sector, which began with her government’s 1986 Financial Services Act, has contributed to the most significant global economic crisis since the Great Depression. In the face of the global recession Friedrich Hayek has gone out of fashion. John Maynard Keynes has come back in.
The impact of the economic downturn on British politics cannot be underestimated. The battle lines, so bitterly contested and carefully crafted over the last thirty years have been irrevocably altered. Coupled with the crisis over MP’s expenses, economic events have conspired to create one of those rarest of political moments – a fundamental ideological shift within mainstream British society.
Labour must grasp this opportunity. It’s time to redefine the fault lines of British politics. If the last thirty years were defined by an economic model in which wealth and influence was concentrated in the hands of the few, the next thirty must be defined by power shifting to the grassroots. Proportional representation, popular rights enshrined in a written constitution, a fairer social democratic economic model – that is a legacy to be proud of.
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