Fascinating. One thing that sticks out to me after reading this, is that it seems that those of the "right-leaning" political persuasion may be more inclined to go into business, for example, work as a middle manager until becoming CEO, and those on the left would be more inclined to use government to progress their aims and goals, which naturally lends itself to governments becoming more left-leaning as they fill with those of the left-leaning persuasion.
What makes Margaret Thatcher a bit different is she seems to be of the industrious type, right leaning, that went into the government and was able to navigate the significant bureaucracy.
But today I think that it's more likely, if a Margaret Thatcher archetype arrived, they would join or create their own "start up" in order to disrupt and innovate somewhat outside the typical bureaucratic institutions.
Mrs. Thatcher's political antennae may not fully have appreciated the cultural sewage just beginning to seep into the nooks and crannies of civic life in the eighties, but the suffocating, strangulating economic socialism needed to be immediately and forcefully addressed, which she did. Great lady, great article!
I'll confess up front that this is not of burning interest to me. I know I come across as educated but that is not an entirely correct impression, as it relates to many things. I observe, give a moment's thought and comment. I was not what anyone would call a student of history so my opinions are not, as you suggested elsewhere, necessarily well-informed as to details such as Thatcher's career. I did take note of this; " Few people are outright opposed to political change but Progressives seem permanently hungry for it and believe that politics is the way to make it happen. " Few people? Forgive me for repeating what you read of mine elsewhere, this morning, but I think few people give this stuff much thought at all. As for what Progressives do, they advocate for change and will take it where they can get it -- through legislation or the courts -- and they will take the fight to the media as a means of drumming up support, either genuine or of the "I gotta look good on this" variety in an effort to influence either the courts or legislatures. If there is a difference with Conservatives on this, it is because Conservatives want to (here it is) conserve, not change. That is the difference. Progressives want change (of their choosing, to be sure) while Cons do not. Politics, protest, legal maneuvering and such are all just means to an end -- change.
I agree with you that few people give this stuff much thought ....and I don't actually think that's such a bad thing. I don't think that the world needs to be full of intellectuals. More, the problem (for conservatives like me) is the observation that a university education (in the humanities and social sciences) has degenerated into something that churns out ill-informed pseudo-intellectuals. This of course is a perception (albeit one drawn from observation); it's not a provable fact and would be fiercely contradicted by progressives.
I think your perception is correct. Balance is hard to find. Even more important is that inquiry and debate seem to be lost arts. Argument exists, for sure, but that is not the same as debate and discussion -- open and honest discussion that involves listening and trying to understand what another thinks -- is lost nearly everywhere. As a kid, I was taught to listen carefully to those with whom I disagreed. 1) I might learn something. 2) Maybe I was wrong. 3) At the least, I'd be in a better position to argue against a position if I understood the argument for it. There was much more to be gained by paying attention to opposing ideas than to people with whom I agreed. Nowadays, I don't think anyone teaches that.
My politics are probably the opposite of yours, Graham, and I spent the 80s filled with contempt for Mrs Thatcher's policies. 'Tramp the Dirt Down' as Elvis Costello, sang it. But the recent BBC documentary, 'Thatcher: A Very British Revolution' made me question some of my former attitudes and I have given a lot of thought as to why.
My life was affected by Thatcher's policies in interesting ways.
Firstly, I was one of the primary school children whose daily milk supply was taken away by Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher. That put her policy stake in the ground as willing to sacrifice the good of society for minuscule economic savings. As Churchill said "There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies." She famously regretted it later.
Secondly, I was sent to patrol the Falkland Islands just after the war. I think Mrs Thatcher's actions during the war were among the boldest, most admirable of any politician in my lifetime. They made me proud then and still make me proud now but it could be argued that the cause of the war was a direct result of her government's attempt to save a little money by negotiating a leaseback scheme with Argentina.
Fourthly, my Dad lost his job in the quite appalling series of job closures that left the UK with barely any manufacturing or industry and economic desolation in many towns across the north of England.
Lastly, I was at Ibrox when the crowd sang "You can stick yer fucking Poll Tax up yer arse!". The disastrous policy that led ultimately to her downfall.
The theme that unites all of these events was Mrs Thatcher's relentless pursuit of radical economic policies, even at the cost of social cohesion. Her devotion to Hayek's economic theories and her blindness to the damage that it did to society are astounding. Is it possible to imagine a Thatcher with all those qualities who was not so callous about the consequences of her economic policies on people's lives?
A last thought: I was truly shocked at your comparison of one of the most impressive political figures of the twentieth century with the malevolent conman who recently occupied the White House. As much as I disliked her policies, I never doubted Mrs Thatcher's honesty, consistency and steadfastness.
Differences of political/historical perception as wide as those between you and I are never going to be ironed out in a discussion like this but - given all that - I'm curious: how did you come across this article?
In terms of the views expressed in your comment I will just reply to one. British manufacturing was in a bad way right from the start of the post-WW2 era (many economists would argue that the rot set in much earlier). We were the first to industrialise but once other manufacturing nations started to compete with us, they out-competed us. All of them. First Germany and the USA, then Japan, France and even Italy. For a period the full extent of the UK's poorly managed and uncompetitive industry was disguised by the fact that we had large captive markets in the empire/commonwealth. There is a huge body of economic/historical literature on all this if you care to explore it.
I came across an interesting comment yesterday that - unlike with scientific experimentation - history is an 'experiment' with no 'control group'. In other words we can never know what the effect, different government policies to the ones actually taken would have had. But I think that there is no serious doubt that British industry was falling apart BEFORE Thatcher came to power and its precipitate decline would have continued whatever government was in power. Thatcher has been wrongly (and ignorantly) demonised on this.
Point taken on the dismal state of the UK's manufacturing in the 70s. I don't disagree. I wonder whether there was a remedy that did not rip the soul out of so many towns and families. Thatcher's policy on the miner's strike, for example, was one that I supported at the time and Britain had no business subsidising coal mining in the 1980s; but was there no way to taper off of our addiction to outdated industrial practices without destroying the societies around them?
I've often thought that conservatives have a built-in advantage over liberals because it's so much easier to make hard decisions when you see people as statistics.
Yes, in the West as it has become in 2023, both conservatives and progressives are starting to question whether there have been big downsides to our era of rampant liberal individualism - in terms of social cohesion.
We are proving that people of goodwill can speak civilly even when they fundamentally disagree on politics. We scored another point for social cohesion!
I know! And beautifully put may I say. Might I even persuade you to take a free subscription.... think of it as your once-a-month window into the conservative mind?
Margaret Thatcher did not enter politics to earn a fortune on the speaker circuit, or advise African despots, or destroy democracy by handing over decisions to unelected bureaucrats.
Margaret Thatcher had principles, and unlike the modern politician or Groucho Marx, never said that she had others if you didn't like them.
Margaret Thatcher believed in capitalism because, unfettered, it normally gets the right result.
Margaret Thatcher had no time for virtue signalling or being permanently offended.
Margaret Thatcher usually held the moral high ground when others both on her side and in opposition did not.
I think the antidote relates to how this trend towards progressive illiberalism occurred. There are 3 explanations as to the rise of Woke:
1. Cultural Marxism: Christopher Rufo explains the long march through the institutions by neo-Marxists. His thesis is one of culture being upstream of politics and driven by these new radicals (e.g., Marcuse, Davis, Fraire & Bell).
2. Cultural Socialism: Eric Kaufmann outlines an evolution of liberalism from a merging of liberalism with humanitarianism and egalitarianism in the 19th century, arriving at the Left Modernism of the early 20th century, and on to 1960s post-modernism. This iteration pushes a progressive Liberal guilt around a series of taboos on race, gender, and sexuality based on power dynamics and notions of ‘harm’. Again, this is culture being upstream of politics but working in slow-building historical waves.
3. A New US Constitution: Hanania depicts a liberal ‘interpretation’ of the Civil Rights Act (1964) with affirmative action, disparate impact, harassment cases and Executive Orders setting the tone. Here the law is upstream of culture and, he believes, could be reset.
All three have validity and are complementary, but I think explanations 1 & 2, which have culture upstream of politics, are the most interesting and are two sides of the same coin. They explain how passive liberal guilt ‘bent the knee’ to passive-aggressive new left radicalism. You need both as neither are working in a vacuum.
The question is: how do we reset this narrative? Especially given most of the population do not agree with the lurch toward progressive illiberalism. De Santis’, Rufo-inspired, muscular reset in Florida makes sense but we also need to tap into the sensible majority who have either been ignorant, indifferent or intimidated by the rise of progressive illiberalism. A knee-jerk Populism is the ultimate end-point if we can’t stand up to the present malaise both politically and rationally.
We need a new Maggie to point out the bleeding obvious!
Thank you...and very interesting comment. I have a lot of respect for Rufo's activism (less for Hanania) but I do not agree with the Gramscian/Cultural Marxism conspiracy analysis of his (and many other rightist intellectuals). I think it is a cop out because by blaming it all on this or that 'elite' it shies away from confronting a darker truth. This 'long march' through the institutions has indeed happened but it has only been possible because most people are intellectual/philosophical sheep. A university 'education' seems only to make them even more sheeplike. The roots of all this go back to the 1930s (if not before) when an up-itself intelligentsia was allowed to take hold of our institutions of higher learning without any conservative reaction to - or even interest in - this cultural virus.
How do we reset the narrative? Well people like Rufo are trying to do that in America (Britain is more hopeless) but I am a pessimist....I do not think there will be any reset this side of things turning pretty ugly in the Western world.
Very interesting. Maggie Thatcher was an inspiration for me as a young person from a council house background, having seen years of gruesome Labour 'government' and their stupid Communist ideas. Could someone turn things around now? I don't think so, we need some sort of massive crisis, a collapse, a real depression, with people turning on the overpaid elites sucking the life out of the economy, before things will turn up.
I wonder sometimes if I've turned into a very grumpy person but no, things really are bad; government spending, for nothing useful, will destroy the economy, and mass immigration is off the scale. More people in one year, 2022, than in ten years 1980/2000. (745,000 v 609,000) that's an ugly storm coming.
And tragically you're right about the need for a crisis.... because only when the people who've been virtue-signalling for all this crazy stuff actually get to suffer the consequences of their folly themselves (rather than just those lower down the social scale).... only then will (at least some) sanity return.
The ideal crisis will be Ed Miliband insisting everyone has an EV and a heat pump, and then all the lights will go out. The ordinary man or woman is hard to galvanise into action, but take away their cars, heating and foreign holidays, and we'll see some sort of reaction.
I think the tragedy of modern Britain is that both sides have had sucess in different fields and yet neither side is happy. The right has had perpetual government but has been unable to do anything meaningful with it (because it doesn't really believe in the power of government, and because Thatcher already did everything it might have wanted to do). Meanwhile the left has achieved hegemony in many institutions but has been locked out of the one institution it cares about more than all others combined.
I like this way of putting things...and, as you say, a tragedy of modern Britain. I think too that all of the Western world (with Britain an advanced case) is painfully discovering some serious downsides to the (undeniably great and better understood) upsides of liberal individualism.
Excellent stuff Graham. There is no one on the right in the UK who displays one tenth of Thatcher’s energy, grounded as you say in her steadfast self confidence that she was simply ‘doing the right thing’. I grew up at a time when everyone I knew -including me-was anti-Fatcher! But it was only years later I realised that though she undoubtedly caused a lot of misery and grief, especially in the post industrial North, she won support from those C2D voters because she sought, at heart, to empower, not infantilise the working classes. An attitude missing from all
Beautiful writing.
Thank you.
Fascinating. One thing that sticks out to me after reading this, is that it seems that those of the "right-leaning" political persuasion may be more inclined to go into business, for example, work as a middle manager until becoming CEO, and those on the left would be more inclined to use government to progress their aims and goals, which naturally lends itself to governments becoming more left-leaning as they fill with those of the left-leaning persuasion.
What makes Margaret Thatcher a bit different is she seems to be of the industrious type, right leaning, that went into the government and was able to navigate the significant bureaucracy.
But today I think that it's more likely, if a Margaret Thatcher archetype arrived, they would join or create their own "start up" in order to disrupt and innovate somewhat outside the typical bureaucratic institutions.
Great read!
Very true all that.
Mrs. Thatcher's political antennae may not fully have appreciated the cultural sewage just beginning to seep into the nooks and crannies of civic life in the eighties, but the suffocating, strangulating economic socialism needed to be immediately and forcefully addressed, which she did. Great lady, great article!
I'll confess up front that this is not of burning interest to me. I know I come across as educated but that is not an entirely correct impression, as it relates to many things. I observe, give a moment's thought and comment. I was not what anyone would call a student of history so my opinions are not, as you suggested elsewhere, necessarily well-informed as to details such as Thatcher's career. I did take note of this; " Few people are outright opposed to political change but Progressives seem permanently hungry for it and believe that politics is the way to make it happen. " Few people? Forgive me for repeating what you read of mine elsewhere, this morning, but I think few people give this stuff much thought at all. As for what Progressives do, they advocate for change and will take it where they can get it -- through legislation or the courts -- and they will take the fight to the media as a means of drumming up support, either genuine or of the "I gotta look good on this" variety in an effort to influence either the courts or legislatures. If there is a difference with Conservatives on this, it is because Conservatives want to (here it is) conserve, not change. That is the difference. Progressives want change (of their choosing, to be sure) while Cons do not. Politics, protest, legal maneuvering and such are all just means to an end -- change.
I agree with you that few people give this stuff much thought ....and I don't actually think that's such a bad thing. I don't think that the world needs to be full of intellectuals. More, the problem (for conservatives like me) is the observation that a university education (in the humanities and social sciences) has degenerated into something that churns out ill-informed pseudo-intellectuals. This of course is a perception (albeit one drawn from observation); it's not a provable fact and would be fiercely contradicted by progressives.
I think your perception is correct. Balance is hard to find. Even more important is that inquiry and debate seem to be lost arts. Argument exists, for sure, but that is not the same as debate and discussion -- open and honest discussion that involves listening and trying to understand what another thinks -- is lost nearly everywhere. As a kid, I was taught to listen carefully to those with whom I disagreed. 1) I might learn something. 2) Maybe I was wrong. 3) At the least, I'd be in a better position to argue against a position if I understood the argument for it. There was much more to be gained by paying attention to opposing ideas than to people with whom I agreed. Nowadays, I don't think anyone teaches that.
That was a great grounding for any kid. My father taught me to question fashionable ideas.
Also good. Fashionable and good can coexist but do not necessarily do so.
If I'd been born British, I would have voted for Mary Poppins... and today written an eloquent salutation (such as yours).
Really insightful article..many thanks
And thank you...appreciated.
My politics are probably the opposite of yours, Graham, and I spent the 80s filled with contempt for Mrs Thatcher's policies. 'Tramp the Dirt Down' as Elvis Costello, sang it. But the recent BBC documentary, 'Thatcher: A Very British Revolution' made me question some of my former attitudes and I have given a lot of thought as to why.
My life was affected by Thatcher's policies in interesting ways.
Firstly, I was one of the primary school children whose daily milk supply was taken away by Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher. That put her policy stake in the ground as willing to sacrifice the good of society for minuscule economic savings. As Churchill said "There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies." She famously regretted it later.
Secondly, I was sent to patrol the Falkland Islands just after the war. I think Mrs Thatcher's actions during the war were among the boldest, most admirable of any politician in my lifetime. They made me proud then and still make me proud now but it could be argued that the cause of the war was a direct result of her government's attempt to save a little money by negotiating a leaseback scheme with Argentina.
Fourthly, my Dad lost his job in the quite appalling series of job closures that left the UK with barely any manufacturing or industry and economic desolation in many towns across the north of England.
Lastly, I was at Ibrox when the crowd sang "You can stick yer fucking Poll Tax up yer arse!". The disastrous policy that led ultimately to her downfall.
The theme that unites all of these events was Mrs Thatcher's relentless pursuit of radical economic policies, even at the cost of social cohesion. Her devotion to Hayek's economic theories and her blindness to the damage that it did to society are astounding. Is it possible to imagine a Thatcher with all those qualities who was not so callous about the consequences of her economic policies on people's lives?
A last thought: I was truly shocked at your comparison of one of the most impressive political figures of the twentieth century with the malevolent conman who recently occupied the White House. As much as I disliked her policies, I never doubted Mrs Thatcher's honesty, consistency and steadfastness.
Differences of political/historical perception as wide as those between you and I are never going to be ironed out in a discussion like this but - given all that - I'm curious: how did you come across this article?
In terms of the views expressed in your comment I will just reply to one. British manufacturing was in a bad way right from the start of the post-WW2 era (many economists would argue that the rot set in much earlier). We were the first to industrialise but once other manufacturing nations started to compete with us, they out-competed us. All of them. First Germany and the USA, then Japan, France and even Italy. For a period the full extent of the UK's poorly managed and uncompetitive industry was disguised by the fact that we had large captive markets in the empire/commonwealth. There is a huge body of economic/historical literature on all this if you care to explore it.
I came across an interesting comment yesterday that - unlike with scientific experimentation - history is an 'experiment' with no 'control group'. In other words we can never know what the effect, different government policies to the ones actually taken would have had. But I think that there is no serious doubt that British industry was falling apart BEFORE Thatcher came to power and its precipitate decline would have continued whatever government was in power. Thatcher has been wrongly (and ignorantly) demonised on this.
I followed your link on Astral Codex Ten.
Point taken on the dismal state of the UK's manufacturing in the 70s. I don't disagree. I wonder whether there was a remedy that did not rip the soul out of so many towns and families. Thatcher's policy on the miner's strike, for example, was one that I supported at the time and Britain had no business subsidising coal mining in the 1980s; but was there no way to taper off of our addiction to outdated industrial practices without destroying the societies around them?
I've often thought that conservatives have a built-in advantage over liberals because it's so much easier to make hard decisions when you see people as statistics.
Yes, in the West as it has become in 2023, both conservatives and progressives are starting to question whether there have been big downsides to our era of rampant liberal individualism - in terms of social cohesion.
Look at us agreeing already!
We are proving that people of goodwill can speak civilly even when they fundamentally disagree on politics. We scored another point for social cohesion!
I know! And beautifully put may I say. Might I even persuade you to take a free subscription.... think of it as your once-a-month window into the conservative mind?
I’ll give it a try.
Feel free to check me out too. I don't blog regularly and rarely about politics these days. Take a look.
https://www.raggedclown.com/
Margaret Thatcher did not enter politics to earn a fortune on the speaker circuit, or advise African despots, or destroy democracy by handing over decisions to unelected bureaucrats.
Margaret Thatcher had principles, and unlike the modern politician or Groucho Marx, never said that she had others if you didn't like them.
Margaret Thatcher believed in capitalism because, unfettered, it normally gets the right result.
Margaret Thatcher had no time for virtue signalling or being permanently offended.
Margaret Thatcher usually held the moral high ground when others both on her side and in opposition did not.
Great essay.
I think the antidote relates to how this trend towards progressive illiberalism occurred. There are 3 explanations as to the rise of Woke:
1. Cultural Marxism: Christopher Rufo explains the long march through the institutions by neo-Marxists. His thesis is one of culture being upstream of politics and driven by these new radicals (e.g., Marcuse, Davis, Fraire & Bell).
2. Cultural Socialism: Eric Kaufmann outlines an evolution of liberalism from a merging of liberalism with humanitarianism and egalitarianism in the 19th century, arriving at the Left Modernism of the early 20th century, and on to 1960s post-modernism. This iteration pushes a progressive Liberal guilt around a series of taboos on race, gender, and sexuality based on power dynamics and notions of ‘harm’. Again, this is culture being upstream of politics but working in slow-building historical waves.
3. A New US Constitution: Hanania depicts a liberal ‘interpretation’ of the Civil Rights Act (1964) with affirmative action, disparate impact, harassment cases and Executive Orders setting the tone. Here the law is upstream of culture and, he believes, could be reset.
All three have validity and are complementary, but I think explanations 1 & 2, which have culture upstream of politics, are the most interesting and are two sides of the same coin. They explain how passive liberal guilt ‘bent the knee’ to passive-aggressive new left radicalism. You need both as neither are working in a vacuum.
The question is: how do we reset this narrative? Especially given most of the population do not agree with the lurch toward progressive illiberalism. De Santis’, Rufo-inspired, muscular reset in Florida makes sense but we also need to tap into the sensible majority who have either been ignorant, indifferent or intimidated by the rise of progressive illiberalism. A knee-jerk Populism is the ultimate end-point if we can’t stand up to the present malaise both politically and rationally.
We need a new Maggie to point out the bleeding obvious!
Thank you...and very interesting comment. I have a lot of respect for Rufo's activism (less for Hanania) but I do not agree with the Gramscian/Cultural Marxism conspiracy analysis of his (and many other rightist intellectuals). I think it is a cop out because by blaming it all on this or that 'elite' it shies away from confronting a darker truth. This 'long march' through the institutions has indeed happened but it has only been possible because most people are intellectual/philosophical sheep. A university 'education' seems only to make them even more sheeplike. The roots of all this go back to the 1930s (if not before) when an up-itself intelligentsia was allowed to take hold of our institutions of higher learning without any conservative reaction to - or even interest in - this cultural virus.
How do we reset the narrative? Well people like Rufo are trying to do that in America (Britain is more hopeless) but I am a pessimist....I do not think there will be any reset this side of things turning pretty ugly in the Western world.
Very interesting. Maggie Thatcher was an inspiration for me as a young person from a council house background, having seen years of gruesome Labour 'government' and their stupid Communist ideas. Could someone turn things around now? I don't think so, we need some sort of massive crisis, a collapse, a real depression, with people turning on the overpaid elites sucking the life out of the economy, before things will turn up.
That's exactly how I see things. It's a strange feeling though isn't it.... to be actually praying for a massive crisis?
I wonder sometimes if I've turned into a very grumpy person but no, things really are bad; government spending, for nothing useful, will destroy the economy, and mass immigration is off the scale. More people in one year, 2022, than in ten years 1980/2000. (745,000 v 609,000) that's an ugly storm coming.
And tragically you're right about the need for a crisis.... because only when the people who've been virtue-signalling for all this crazy stuff actually get to suffer the consequences of their folly themselves (rather than just those lower down the social scale).... only then will (at least some) sanity return.
Oh yes, that's very true.
The ideal crisis will be Ed Miliband insisting everyone has an EV and a heat pump, and then all the lights will go out. The ordinary man or woman is hard to galvanise into action, but take away their cars, heating and foreign holidays, and we'll see some sort of reaction.
I think the tragedy of modern Britain is that both sides have had sucess in different fields and yet neither side is happy. The right has had perpetual government but has been unable to do anything meaningful with it (because it doesn't really believe in the power of government, and because Thatcher already did everything it might have wanted to do). Meanwhile the left has achieved hegemony in many institutions but has been locked out of the one institution it cares about more than all others combined.
I like this way of putting things...and, as you say, a tragedy of modern Britain. I think too that all of the Western world (with Britain an advanced case) is painfully discovering some serious downsides to the (undeniably great and better understood) upsides of liberal individualism.
Excellent stuff Graham. There is no one on the right in the UK who displays one tenth of Thatcher’s energy, grounded as you say in her steadfast self confidence that she was simply ‘doing the right thing’. I grew up at a time when everyone I knew -including me-was anti-Fatcher! But it was only years later I realised that though she undoubtedly caused a lot of misery and grief, especially in the post industrial North, she won support from those C2D voters because she sought, at heart, to empower, not infantilise the working classes. An attitude missing from all
Of todays politicians, left or right. I wrote about it here https://open.substack.com/pub/lowstatus/p/in-praise-of-populism?r=evzeq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web