exiledclaseboy said:
I suppose it depends on your definition of ordinary but Thatcher was the daughter of a fairly well heeled shop owner as I remember it. Not wealthy, certainly not gentrified in any way but the very definition of comfortable middle class. Major’s working class origins are similarly mostly mythical but again, they weren’t your typical landed gentry Tories so I’m probably arguing semantics. And I’m sure neither of us are about to get unnecessarily dewy eyed about either of them. For me they were both awful and destructive in different ways. I’ve always thought Major was a decent man leading a party riven with complacency and corruption much like it is now. I have a far less kind view of Thatcher as a person and her political legacy, the consequences of which are still being keenly felt today.
But the Tory party was different then. Then, love it or hate it (and I’ve been consistently behind the latter emotion) it was still at least a political party that stood for something and had some people with compassion. Now it’s just a political apparatus and a voter base which has been hijacked by extremists in much the same way Trump did with the GOP in the States.
I don’t think she was poor, but her Dad owning a shop and her going to her local grammar school is recognisably ordinary as compared to the whole bunch of Old Etonians that have continued to dominate since.
I think the difficulty with Thatcher’s legacy was her becoming increasingly radical as time went on. At the start she wasn’t really. Her biggest failing for me was the introduction or at least encouragement of the priority of self over the whole. It’s the legacy of that which is being felt so strongly now. The idea that if you can do well for yourself you just carry on and carry on with no restraint. Even if that hurts the whole. Some aspects of that worked for some. There was undoubtedly greater social mobility in the 80s / 90s than there was either before or since. Whether it was through education or encouraging property ownership.
What we see now though is the natural conclusion of that. Utter selfishness where the extremely wealthy want more and more and are not prepared to pay enough in taxation to maintain society as a whole. There is no restraint at all on the gap between wealthy and poor getting bigger and bigger.
At some point it will stop. As the wealthy eventually realise they don’t want to live in a glorified goldfish bowl. Where even they won’t be able to get an operation when they want or schooling they want as there is simply no one to provide it. Or when a pandemic means that they realise they have to rely on the State and support is no longer there as there is no money left.
One thing Covid showed is that the purely capitalist economy can’t work. As there are occasions when the State has to step in to prevent everyone dying. It’s the same in war of course.
You’d imagine people may have thought twice after what’s happened but so far some have just continued lurching to the right. It will stop though. Because I think (hope) that more people are naturally good than not. And those that are have worked out how to tactically vote…
