The parallels in tone with the Thatcher era were clear
In front of around 8,000 people at Manchester Cathedral on Monday night, at the People’s Post rally called by the CWU, I described our current government as an extremist government, one that wants to strangle democracy and push on with privatisation of public services and assets even when the model has clearly failed.
I was thinking then of the plan to stop democratically elected councils implementing bans on products and companies they believe to be destructive to the interests of their residents, if the ban goes against the policies of the national government.
That could have a devastating effect on the increasingly powerful drive to get local authorities and their pension funds to divest from fossil fuels – handy for the government’s many friends in the dinosaur fossil fuel industries.
Added to the extremist anti-democratic tone of this government, there’s the plan to abolish the Human Rights Act, the cuts to legal aid and the plan to prevent local communities resisting the forced academisation of schools.
I was thinking too of Michael Gove – the man who’s made our schools such hell that half of teachers are thinking of leaving the profession – who now wants to privatise more of our prisons, even though evidence clearly shows that privatised prisons are less humane and effective at rehabilitation, and more expensive, than those still in public hands.
And I was thinking of the sell-off of Royal Mail – the ‘privatisation of the Queen’s head’ that even Margaret Thatcher could not countenance.
At Tory Party conference, the parallels in tone with the Thatcher era were clear.
On Sunday 60,000 people, in an act of defiant, peaceful, celebratory, determined protest, expressed their opposition to austerity, to privatisation, to the failure to take policy to tackle climate change seriously. We were many, compared to the few at Tory Party conference.
Yet here was Theresa May expressing a hard line on immigration policy that even Nigel Farage might find hard to outdo. Refugees, victims of torture and state abuse should be allowed, reluctantly, to stay, but only until conditions in their country are judged to have improved, after which they should be shipped back – making Britain not a secure, stable home for those in desperate need, but a temporary, unstable, fearful perching place.
And her ‘tough new plan for asylum’ would limit the numbers given asylum – and deny it to those lucky enough to reach Britain’s shores – in clear breach of our obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees.
The strength of her anti-immigration message even outraged the Institute of Directors and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The former described her stance as ‘rhetoric’ and accused her of putting internal party politics ahead of the national interest.
And there was Iain Duncan Smith displaying a detachment from the facts that even Karl Rove might envy. He doesn’t want disabled and ill people to be ‘victims to be sustained on government handouts‘.
Instead he’s made them victims of penury and fear through the work capability assessment, the ending of the Independent Living Allowance, the 20 per cent cut in help with the introduction of the Personal Independence Payment and the axe of benefit sanctions hanging over them.
Similarly Rovian was Boris Johnson saying we need shared confidence in our political institutions. This from a man who’s part of a government backed by just 24 per cent of eligible voters.
And I’m sure someone somewhere said something about climate change. There are a lot of fringes at Tory Party conference, and campaigners no doubt were plugging away, doing their best, but in the main messages from the conference it was nowhere to be found.
You might remember before the last election that David Cameron, together with Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, made a solemn pledge to take serious steps to cut our carbon emissions. Now Al Gore is just one of the many people pointing out that the government is headed in entirely the wrong direction on that.
With its planned cuts to solar feed-in tariffs, its ideological opposition to onshore wind, its abandonment of standards to ensure new homes are warm, comfortable and affordable to heat, the government has whipped the rug out from under tens of thousands of small businesses, and alienated its natural ally, the CBI.
There’s an extremist anti-renewables stance here, combined with a solicitous concern for the welfare of the oil and gas industries who are just about the only people – well perhaps add in the anti-immigration zealots – who will feel better about the Tories after yesterday’s events at their conference.
This is a government heading to the extremes of Thatcherism, just as the country heads in the opposite direction. A government detached from reality, detached from compassion, and detached from the evidence on climate change.
We really cannot afford, the most vulnerable in our society cannot bear, the planet cannot take, four more years of this government.
Natalie Bennett is the leader of the Green Party. Follow her on Twitter
39 Responses to “Comment: The Tories have now gone further than Thatcher – to the extremes of British politics”
steroflex
No, rather it produces two parties. You have to belong to either one to get power. In countries where this does not happen, there is never a stable government and long term planning (5 years) is impossible. The last coalition was, to my mind, a disaster.
Without the present system – and perhaps with it – the Labour Party will be condemned for ever to be a fringe party with a fringe leader and a fringe set of allies. Is this what you really want?
PS I can use the word “democracy” too. It is de rigeur for all polticians. M. Juncker uses it a lot too and who elected him?
steroflex
“callously condemns many of the most vulnerable of its own citizens to abject penury, and which is determined to drive back society to the Victorian era of laisez-faire and exploitation.”.
I do not see it like that at all.
Mr Cameron and the rest of the Conservatives, like the Labour Party, want to get re-elected. This means that they have to be nice to the great majority of British people.
If they really were as you say, they would not be in power now because, I am sure, we both trust the judgement of the British electorate.
There are two alternatives: work, pay, low tax, look after your family and make sure that genuine hard cases are given love and attention.
Allow the government to look after people with high taxation, a lot of social provision to which everyone is entitled as a right, and a large state bureaucracy.
That is the stark choice. Neither side deserves rubbishing. Both points of view, though different, are sensible.
Dark_Heart_of_Toryland
Actually, the Tories needed the spport of just 25% of the electorate to get into power – hardly the great majority, rather a small minority. And they’ve certainly given up being nice to large sections of the population en bloc, such as the young, who tend not to vote. There are inumerable genuine hard cases who are being given neither love nor attention; the long-term sick and disabled are beng treated as skivers who should be forced back to work – how is that not callous? Furthermore, there are many who work extremely hard, yet who are paid very poor wages, insufficient to maintain a decent lifestyle. There are basic services, such as health, education, police, justice, and infrastructure, which, if they are to be equally accessible to all, have to be paid for by taxation. And it’s all very well to say should rely on their families; but what happens to those who don’t have a family, or whose family won’t help them, or indeed, where whole families are trapped in poverty? Personally, I don’t consider the point of view of everyone for themselves as very sensible at all.
Dark_Heart_of_Toryland
So, are you arguing that the term ‘democracy’ is meaningless, and that it’s a bad thing anyway, because it doesn’t produce stable government?
Comparisons are insidious, but it might be pointed out that the Soviet Union had stable governments, with plenty of five-year-plans.
Mike Stallard
At the end of the day, we run up against reality.
Life is hard.
Get used to it!