Trust me, I'm your Leader

​How long did it take for Thatcherism to become embedded in our society? For the first few years of her premiership, ‘Thatcherism’ as we now call it didn’t really have a name. The conditions in which the seed had been planted provided a fair amount of time for propagation before she nurtured it and luckily for her had this malign plant named after her. It was a plant she was so happy with she even complimented Tony Blair for watering it after she herself had become a ghost in the greenhouse. There will be many better names for her eponymous phenomenon out there—it is a shame that political shifts become so entrenched with personalities, as if just one person came up with a revolutionary idea. Thatcher wasn’t original at all, just as ’Blairism,’ presented as a form of shallow presentational spin politics is hardly unique to Blair. That kind of politics became the norm more thanks to technology than one person (and his 'attack' dog).
 
But what we now call ’Thatcherism’ is the enduring zeitgeist. It occupies and dominates the landscape so much so that the very idea of—imagine this—Starmer saying (as if) he could park his tanks on the Thatcherite lawn makes no sense at all. It is clear that his convergence with Thatcherite thinking is complete. Unlike for Hugh Gaitskell (one half of the much vaunted ‘Butskellism’ consensus of the 1950s) and Rab Butler there is no massive post-war crisis to resolve; there is only the ongoing crisis of capitalism, a crisis which of course neither the Tories nor Starmer’s Labour wish to recognise.
 
The question for Labour Party members is why bother believe the party is capable, now, of the profound policy shifts the crisis demands? The answer lies in hope—hope that once in office Labour will better address the situation than the Tories. I’m happy to accept that here and there there will be policy improvements, but given the Labour leadership’s current stance these will be ephemeral and easily reversible. There’s ample evidence already of the leadership’s inability to stray far from the Thatcherite consensus. It’s a commonplace. Hunteevesism doesn’t have the same ring as Butskellism, but it might well suffice to illustrate the departure from the supposed inspiration of a previous consensus.
 
Apart from this rather forlorn hope the other thing that keeps Labour Party members paid-up is simply the tribal instinct to wish the demise of the Tory tribe. This is a tribal instinct with roots as old as the hills. But does this sensation have quite the same resonance for our current leadership? If you grew up in the all enveloping Thatcherite milieu, exactly how much have you absorbed of it? How can you conceptually escape it?  Don’t get me started.