Thatcher & Sons: A Revolution In Three Acts
Simon Jenkins
Penguin Allen Lane, 375pp, £20.00
That Margaret Thatcher has had a profound and enduring impact on British politics is the unremarkable premise of Simon Jenkin’s ‘argued history’ of the last three decades. The Thatcherite ‘revolution’ has proved a double-edged sword: reducing state control in the economy while at the same time increasing the sphere of state regulation and intervention. Under Tony Blair – Britain’s ‘most Thatcherite’ prime minister – these contradictory trends have reached their apotheosis. Now a ‘third revolution’ of ‘new localism’ is required if the liberating potential of Thatcherism is not to be lost to its underlying centralising tendencies.
Jenkin’s account of the neglect of local government by successive Tory and Labour administrations is well made. However, to suggest that political developments over the past 30 years have occurred entirely within the paradigm of ‘Thatcherism’ is misleading. It is a political truism that New Labour has accepted much of the Iron Lady’s economic legacy. But to say that Gordon Brown – ‘Thatcherism’s most coveted St Paul’ – used ‘the tools of Thatcherism’ to implement his redistributive tax credits is simply fatuous.
In his much-stated aversion to central government Jenkins also ignores the fact that the most pressing political problems of our time – climate change, terrorism and the increasing inequalities brought about by economic globalisation – are not directly amenable to ‘new localist’ solutions. How to ensure accountability at the international level of decision-making needed to address these problems is likely to prove the more pressing political concern in the long term. The disgruntled aldermen in the shires may have to wait.