Neil Kinnock said this in a speech in Bridgend, Glamorgan, on Tuesday 7 June 1983:
If Margaret Thatcher is re-elected as prime minister on Thursday, I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain — when healing and relief depend upon payment. I warn you that you will have ignorance — when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right. I warn you that you will have poverty — when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won't pay in an economy that can't pay. I warn you that you will be cold — when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don't notice and the poor can't afford.
I warn you that you must not expect work — when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don't earn, they don't spend. When they don't spend, work dies. I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light. I warn you that you will be quiet — when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient. I warn you that you will have defence of a sort — with a risk and at a price that passes all understanding. I warn you that you will be home-bound — when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up. I warn you that you will borrow less — when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income.
If Margaret Thatcher wins on Thursday, I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old.
It resonates even more powerfully 30 years later.
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Never mind good old “socialists” Neil and Glenys made their millions from the E.U not too popular in the valleys now are they?
Great oratory, I agree, Richard.
It didn’t come to pass, though, did it?
In fact the Tories won two more elections after that — the people have spoken. Unless, of course, the only people whose opinions count are those who agree with you?
Don’t get me wrong — I don”t carry a torch for the Blues. It’s just that, like you, I’m an FCA and the books have to balance.
I greatly enjoy your well-informed comments on tax — nice to have someone who actually knows about the subject — but I don’t buy the Socialist addons!
Best regards
Tom
Tom
The books do balance – as a matter of fact. The government has a balance sheet and it balances.That is all accounting requires.
What you do not show is any understanding of the nature of macroeconomics or money. In the microeconomic theory of the firm profits are maximised: in practice that’s dependent on cash flow, not profit.
But government’s can’t go insolvent – precisely because they demand you pay them in their own IOUs – and that’s the fact you ignore. Firms can’t do that, so the two are fundamentally different
Consusing them is a fudamental category error in your thinking
Richard
Spot on Richard and your reply goes to the heart of the problem. Thatcher started it thinking you can run a country like a corner shop and the press continue to try and explain global macroeconomics in the same over-simplistic way. And in any case if we did wish to use a simple analogy a firm just sitting on capital would soon become stagnant – as an ex-FD I always stressed that our goal was to make that capital turnover as often as possible and in doing so create growth and added value AND that was in a semi-commercial department within Government no less and it worked.
Thank you for your reply, Richard.
With respect, I *do* appreciate that macro- and micro-economics are different. I was merely trying to save time and space by using the shorthand phrase “the books have to balance”.
I should have put it slightly differently — sooner or later the Govt’s expenditure has to be brought in line with its income — ie it can’t carry on borrowing for ever.
The debate, surely, revolves how this is done?
And governments *can* (in effect) become insolvent — look at the Weimar Republic (or indeed, Cyprus).
BTW —
1) I read your ACCA paper on the Flat Tax today — excellent.
2) I also liked your analysis of GAntiP vs GAAR. Can’t see why Govts (of both persuasions) haven’t grasped this — I was always a fan of Ramsay and Furniss vs Dawson
Tom
Tom
Thanks for compliments
But I am afraid you do not get the micro point – there is absolutely no Eason at all why the government’s budget must balance – and very good reason why it should not – most especially in the current environment where a balanced budget may well mean very long term depression
You forget the gov’t issues money – and demands tax be paid in it. That means if the right am of gov’t is full employment (and it must be) then budge deficits pay
Richard
Thanks for your latest, Richard.
Happy to continue this via e-mail if you will let me have your e-mail address.
I freely confess I don’t follow your last point (about the Govt issuing money). Agreed Govts print money. And that they demand that taxes be paid in it. But that doesn’t necessarily ward off disaster if they print too much.
Also — I agree budget doesn’t necessarily have to balance in short term — BUT over long term, surely it must (unless the National Debt continues to rise forever?)
Tom
There is no reason why the national debt must balance – and ample reason why it should not – like invests for real growth
The opinion that counted in that year was that of The Sun. Famously spoofed by Private Eye – “Kill an Argy and win a Metro”.
I don’t know if you’ve read Tam Dalyell’s “Thatcher’s Torpedo”? You should – also “One man’s Falklands”
I know that she didn’t begin the process – that was started by Wislon in 1970/71, but the demolition of the mixed economy and its replacement by neo-liberalism is the worst aspect of my life. I’m a 19345 baby and I hate where we are now!
Electorally, Thatcher blew it. What, in the middle-term, happened to her 22 Tory seats in Scotland? The 11 UU fellow-travellers of the Tories in NI? The Tory ‘landslide’ of 1983 was all of a 42% mandate (the centre-Left Labour + SDP/Libs amounted to 53%).
When the history of the break-up of the Union comes to be written, it might properly start around this moment.
@ Tom Morton – are you living on the same planet as the rest of us? Just look out of the window, and go down Kinnock’s check-list, and see how many of his predictions match up! Sure, Thatcher may have gone on to win two more elections, and Major a 4th for the Tories thereafter, but that circumstance doesn’t invalidate Kinnock’s analysis, rather it validates the skill with which Thatcher and her neo-liberal crazies managed to fool enough of the electorate into believing things were getting better, when in truth, they were just enjoying “Tom and Jerry” illusion of freedom Tom experiences when he goes over the cliff and doesn’t begin to fall until he realizes there’s nothing beneath him.
People who had Council houses, local buses, state-owned railways, municipal gas, local authority Swimming Pools, Local Education Authorities with locally accountable schools didn’t notice the “distraction burglary” they were suffering, as Thatcher waved British Gas shares and Right to Buy in front of the, but now they see the ground hurtling to meet them, they realize they were sold a pup, and a pig in a poke.
I remain convinced that we are seeing the beginning of the long echo of history, a reverberation from the year of miracles and the Velvet Revolutions of 1989, when people, having long ago seen thorough the nonsense of “actually existing Socialism” and Communism, realized they could act together and and turf out the old nomenklatura.
Now, in a sort of political equivalent of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction, we are witnessing our own Velvet Revolution, where those who have long been fooled by the complete bollocks of neo-liberalism — quite as mad, and quite as cruel as Communism — are waking up from their dream, and beginning to take action — local action, for consider the sheer number of demonstrations across the country against the Con-Dem’s cruel and insane Bedroom Tax. People are making ready to sweep the neo-liberal nomenklatura, the pinstripe Mafia, out of their comfortable positions (where they leech on the body politic, draining the blood and money and life out of the rest of us while the idle about and contribute nothing to the common good), and chuck the whole lot out of any position of power and influence, which is precisely where they deserve to be.
Maybe they can then learn some useful skill and how to make some useful contribution to society, and really earn their way. We can always hope, as no one is beyond redemption.
Well said
Andrew —
Thank you for your reply.
I am indeed on the same planet. And a lot of other voters are also.
I won’t enter into lengthy correspondence, as I don’t think there’s much chance of us reaching agreement….
By the way, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that “in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state.”
“Every action has an equal and opposite reaction” is Newton’s Third Law.
Tom
Then, in the company of a small group of friends in my Glasgow hotel room I watched as the nation got it all wrong. Again.
They continues to get it wrong. I feel strongly that we need as a nation to regain control of our money supply from banking. But what hope do we have when the press so influence opinion that we have ended up with three Tory parties and a loony one?
Sorry, “continue”. And of course I was referring to that Thursday.
Brilliant rhetoric by Neil Kinnock. And the key to why Labour lost in 1983, 1987 and 1992 is the flip side of the reason Labour will win in 2015; UK election results in the 1980s were the consequence of a split left in the UK electoral system (mainly due to the SDP breakaway in 1981), whereas now we have a split right. The three-way Tory/Lib Dem/UKIP split makes it much easier for Labour to gain an overall majority. (And, of course, the failure to change the constituency boundaries). That’s the true weirdness of First Past the Post.
Weird indeed
But as we agree – we need to make sure Labour used that victory to best effect
Absolutely! In the run up to 2010, Neal Lawson said he was afraid of two outcomes: (1) Labour losing the election; (2) Labour winning the election. And I guess I feel the same about 2015. Certainly Ed Miliband’s heart is in the right place and one can say the same about most (although not all!) of the shadow cabinet. But do they have policies worked out to match the challenge they will face in 2015? In most areas, at the moment, I would have to say no (although some of the things that have emerged have been encouraging – for example last week’s announcement of a regional banking policy was good).
@Tom – Thanks for the physics lesson. So I got the wrong Law – I’m not a physicist, only your average Joe – but I didn’t get the wrong observation of the phenomenon.
Have a nice week-end, and we’ll agree to differ.
Andrew
Thanks Andrew
I’m not a physicist either — I am, or was, a mathematician — different story ;0)
Thanks for your good wishes — reciprocated!
Tom