ONE of the problems I’ve had with Iain Duncan Smith’s recent pronoucements on social breakdown and benefit dependency is his apparent refusal to acknowledge his own party’s complicity in creating the problem.
But a new interview to appear in next month’s Fabian Review seems to indicate a change of heart. According to Next Left, IDS not only starts to accept the Thatcher government’s mistakes in the ’80s, but also credits Denis Healey as the Labour chancellor who kick-started Britain’s economic recovery, making Thatcher’s job easier when the Tories took over in 1979:
Britain’s position by 1978/9 was appalling – we were just disappearing as a nation. It simply was not possible to go on any longer.
You have to remember it was Denis Healey who did most of the serious hard work, the heavy lifting, before Mrs Thatcher came in. Had she come in without Healey’s work in the IMF, I don’t think she’d have lasted two years. She would have been out in 1983. Getting the economy back to a point where it was profitable and we had some sort of enterprise was [vital].
But yes, what happened next was in some ways [unfortunate]. We forgot that, while the economy was moving on, society itself was not really ready for this. Swathes of the population got left behind in the process…The gap between the bottom socio-economic group and the rest started to grow, and it’s grown ever since. Under Labour it’s grown almost faster in some senses.
While I’m not going to point the finger and say the changes made in the Eighties were wrong, we didn’t have any real sense of where this might go and what needed to happen. Big social reforms should have taken place then, and they never did.
IDS’s willingness to cross the political divide in an attempt to reach new solutions is entirely commendable. Don’t get me wrong — those who know me, and who read this blog, know that I’m as tribal a politician as any, and I will do everything I can to help Labour win a fourth term.
But some problems are just so colossal, so entrenched, that I find it difficult to work up the enthusiasm to waste time with name-calling in the House of Commons. I’m glad that at least one MP on the opposition benches feels the same way.
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Saturday 21 March 2009 at 12:56 pm
Bless!
Saturday 21 March 2009 at 1:27 pm
Does that mean that you, along with the rest of the Labour Party, will acknowledge the economic foundation put in place by the John Major government which underpinned all of this Government’s economic achievements (apart from the most recent).
Saturday 21 March 2009 at 2:18 pm
It was the IMF who rescued this country, not Denis Healey. It was the IMF who imposed strict limits on expenditure in order to reduce the size of the deficit. If Healey had not gone to the IMF, he would have grown it even further
Saturday 21 March 2009 at 2:44 pm
Yeah. Ahem. Really tribal. That’s you.
Saturday 21 March 2009 at 4:05 pm
josh is right – although to be fair , at some time denis healey did say ‘when in a hole stop digging’ words to live by but probably not said at the time under consideration.
Saturday 21 March 2009 at 4:53 pm
Glad to see that you’re finally beginning to accept that Margaret Thatcher was truly our greatest post-war Prime Minister.
Saturday 21 March 2009 at 7:01 pm
The problem I have with most politicians is that nobody in on t’other side of the room can seemingly do anything right unless they commit to a full and frank apology for everything else their own party has done in the past.
c.f., any Hansard transcript.
It doesn’t matter that the Tories were complicit in creating a huge number of socio-economic problems, particularly (and it’s widely known by the man on the street, as it goes). Crowing about that doesn’t win anybody any prizes and doesn’t do anything to fix it.
Made-up, but entirely plausible example, illustrating why many folk think politicians are all mouth and no trousers:—
“(Fred Smyth, Con., Little Thornbury) Will the hon. Gentleman give a statement on this Government’s position on the downturn of society and outline steps that will be taken on a course of corrective action?”
“(Arnold Jones, Lab., Ealing North-East) May I remind the member for Little Thornbury of his own party’s pivotal role in creating many of the problems his enquiry surrounds, and refer him to the answer given to my hon. Friend from Preston North a short while ago regarding the decisive action we will be taking in the form of a ‘New Deal for the Future’.”
“(Carrington Potterswick, Con., Teddington West) Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”
“(Arnold Jones, Lab., Ealing North-East) It is normally a mistake to give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I will.”
“(Carrington Potterswick, Con., Teddington West) Will the hon. Gentleman not admit that this so-called ‘New Deal for the Future’ is not a ‘New Deal’ at all, but a reincarnation of the groundbreaking policies introduced by the Conservatives in 1986?”
etc., etc., etc.
Saturday 21 March 2009 at 7:06 pm
In the furore of all of that, I utterly failed to say that I applaud any efforts to leave the name-calling aside, whichever side of the fence it comes from!
Sunday 22 March 2009 at 10:48 am
Tom,
I hadn’t ever considered that the Tories even had a political divide to cross – so thanks for publishing this.
In my head – rescuing the country from oblivion was priority number 1 in the late 70’s early 80’s. That meant everything else registered as a zero to me.
On reflection, the Conservatives should, as priority 2, looked after the people more.
I’m not sure natural Conservatives think about priority 2 sufficiently.
You could make a difference. You should think about joining the Conservatives in government. Let’s face it. They have to rescue the country again as priority 1. This time, however, they could learn from the mistakes of the past. You are the right man at the right time.
‘England expects’………..
Sunday 22 March 2009 at 12:30 pm
Only it is completely incorrect to imply that Thatcher caused disadvantage to people with poor economic prospects. She allowed them to improve their prospects, gave the paths out of dependency and hand-to-mouth living to replace those that Labour governments had cut off. More people rose into the middle class between 1981 and 1991 than any other decade. That is why the pollsters, working from 1981 census data, got the predictions for 1992 so wrong.
Of course that reversed in 1997, when the trend towards dependency started, and the government brought in policies to keep poeple from improving their families’ prospects.
Sunday 22 March 2009 at 12:49 pm
Richard, I know it’s difficult to accept that any Conservative government has ever done anything wrong or ill-advised, but it is a matter of fact that the 1980s saw a massive leap in incapacity benefit claimants at the same time as unemployment shot towards (and over) three million. It is always that case that it’s incredibly easy to get people onto benefits, and much more difficult to get them off it. I don’t know if Thatcher realised this, but the fact remains that even as she publicly deplored the culture of benefit dependency, she was giving it the biggest boost in the history of the welfare state.
This was her greatest failure. Show some political maturity for once and accept that your side doesn’t always get it right.
Monday 23 March 2009 at 9:10 am
“Show some political maturity for once and accept that your side doesn’t always get it right.”
Tom, Do you think it’s time for the current Government to adopt this attitude ? GB wont admit to any mistakes either as chancellor or prime minister, despite a fair amount of evidence to the contrary.
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