This Tweet from me was popular yesterday:
The point is really important, and suggests a real lack of economic understanding on Starmer's part.
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I think it’s more likely he’s trying to appeal to the traditional Conservatives who were abandoned by Boris for the lures of the Right and, like many former Labourites, now consider themselves to have no political home. So the future political alignments will be the Labour party occupies the ground formerly taken up by the Tories, and the Tories will be the party of the extreme Right and nothing else.
Large numbers of MPs are lawyers-many commercial lawyers-and bankers.
Thatcher was a graduate chemist then a barrister. Atlee was a solicitor.
Useful for legislating but not entrepreneurial.
Cameron was in PR and Central Office. Johnson and Gove journalists.
I can’t think of a Prime Minister since 1945 who was in business for any length of time. Although I do recall several business people in the 80s who said their experience would make them better politicians but it didn’t seem to be the case.
No, Attlee was a barrister. Called to the Bar by Inner Temple, I believe, where had had a flat where he lived after he became a widower.
Had a simple funeral, held in the Temple Church – for EASILY the greatest PM of the 20th century, and in the top 4, IMO,
whose actions were almost 100% to the benefit of the UK, and CERTAINLY 100% in the interests of the UK. population.
No ludicrous jingoistic State Funeral, with crocodile tears from her reptilian disciples, as 4 Thatcher led, whom I’d place in the top 4 for infamy, and whose actions were almost entirely negative for 90% of the population.
For 7 believe Thatcher led the UK up its own backside, deep into its digestive tract, where, in the darkness and stench of the breakdown of substance, it is under the mistaken impression that it is feeding and sustaining itself, when in fact it is is cannibalising itself, as more and more assets are stripped away and sold off cheap.
But the “me first/greed is good/money first/bottom line/the cost of everything and the value of nothing” limited vision of Thatcherism prevent atomised individuals from seeing that co-operation almost always trumps competition – a necessary element, but a disastrous master.
The most telling thing about Lord Dave is that he is related to the Royal Family and was given his first job as a result of his prospective employer receiving a letter from Buckingham Palace.
In today’s Britain Back-to-the-Future has become Forward-to-the-Past.
As a person from a working class back ground with a toolmaker father as well, I am frankly embarrassed by Starmer’s lack of grip on the true nature of Thatcher’s reign.
Unbelievable.
One thing we can agree upon is that Thatcher was right when she said that ‘New Labour’ was her greatest creation. Her creation lives on.
A lovely quote from a labour MP in the Independent today.
“You would be better off reading the entrails of a chicken than trying to understand the strategy in Keir’s office, it’s just madness.”
Starmer has at last removed all sign of his ten pledges from his website. That’s good because there aren’t any of them left now.
I was born at home in a Nottinghamshire mining village.Miners were regularly severely injured or killed working to fuel the country. Taking on the NUM was ideological and part of the crusade to destroy one expression of collectivism.I worked in business for over forty years and latterly ran my own business until September this year. I agree with your comments Richard and would add that it was on her watch that the rise of asset stripping “Vulture Capitalists” was fuelled. My experience is that lenders are very reluctant to take risk backing entrepreneurs preferring to take asset backed positions in property for example and also to pile derivatives upon existing assets at potentially catastrophic risk. 2008 comes to mind ! Unions aren’t dead. For example despite fragmenting the rail service ,and it is a vital service, into many risk free businesses that pump wealth to shareholders the RMT has managed to remain coordinated under the leadership of Mick Lynch. The recent pay settlement fell short however they did not capitulate and were successful in rejecting ,for now ,the erosion of key components of their T&Cs. The nurses were disgracefully treated and as their leadership has stated it is unfinished business. They have my support.
I suspect like some commenting on here I lived through the ‘Thatcher Revolution’, which resulted in the collapse of our industries, the loss of North sea Oil revenues, the loss of the first nationalised utilities, support for murderous bastards in other countries (viz Pinochet), the creation of (initially internal) markets in the NHS, the beginnings of the demise of our education system………oh and the ‘police’ dismantling the inside of my car at a road block search near Coalville because I had a ‘support the miners’ sticker. Angry, moi? Still fuming!!!!!
Like you I think the only Thatcher achievement was a kind of mass hoax.
The historian David Edgerton argues that if you look at all the statistics, in the 1970s Britain was at its wealthiest, with most people housed in decent homes and more people having a say in how the country was run than it has ever been.
What the Ruling Upper Classes, that Thatcher represented, violently objected to was that the wealth, the power and the quality of life was evenly distributed.
Might Mr. Starmer be a “Clidiot” or clever idiot?
More of a ‘Fidiot’, I think.
Now you can see why I call Starmer and Reeves – the direly unfunny Non-Laurel and Non-Hardy of the theatre of the absurd, the crlruel, the sociopathic, and straightforward dumb – flat-earther economists.
The really WILL wreck the economy!!
Do we really have to hear any more twaddle about the e-myth? What percentage of society does starmer think can become entrepreneurs – is it everyone, or just a select few special people? Or is this just a lazy randian “bootstrapping” trope, in place of any actual policy or conviction?
I’d be curious to see who counts as an “entrepreneur.” Is a Uber driver an entrepreneur? What about those parcel delivery people who get paid per parcel instead of per hour? What about any French business owner? Presumably they are all entrepreneurs!
The vast majority will never be business owners, and it makes no sense to run society for the benefit of a small minority, even if the ideal of entrepreneurs is real, which I suspect, it is not.
I never liked the term, even when I ran my own business. It did then, and continues to reek of class privilege.
There are those who are self employed artisans – an honourable state – but they are nit entrepreneurs.
No one working as an employee of a large company is an entrepreneur.
The number of entrepreneurs is small and many do not work for profit, or seek it.
Hmm, mindless Thatcherism.
Labour trade off a kind of game theory. The idea is that Lefties will always pick them over Tories so they’re in the bag, so going Right to collect more Tories is a profitable numbers game.
This tactic is buttressed by the mathematical point that one Tory voter switching to Labour counts double (ie -1 Tory, +1 Labour) so the tactic is still viable even when alienating the same number of voters as you gain. Or even somewhat more.
However at some point, surely, Leftists, perhaps even Left-Centre have to give up on Labour.
Maybe it won’t happen until we get PR. However there is surely a massive swell of people who will vote Labour next General Election who are dying to have a better alternative.
Thatcherism. Meh.
The width and depth of Republican and Tory understanding of the concept of being an entrepreneur is best summed up by George W Bush’s remark to Tony Blair, “The problem with the French is that they do not have a word for entrepreneur”.
From Thatcher to Johnson, Truss and Sunak it is just one of those words that the dishonest use to try and sound as if they know what they are talking about.
That was a classic…
This is simply a replay of Tony Blair’s approach in 1997. No surprise that he is in the background.
I’ve been reading a biography of Sir Philip Green by Oliver Shah. Green was born in 1952 and so came of age in 1979, at the beginning of the Thatcher era.
Soon after the ‘big bang’ greedy Green, who although in the ‘rag’ trade, mixed with other
spivs in the City, and was later able to borrow vast sums, after having proved himself by
going bankrupt several times; the hallmark of this type of entrepreneur, and buying up undervalued retail outlets, particularly if they included property. Asset stripping was the name of the game, and Green was one of many that thrived during the 80’s
Green personified Thatcher’s idea of entrepreneurialism, along with her favourite, Lord Hanson, another serial asset stripper.