The Conservative Party

[SebastianBlue]

it won't change that she was our greatest PM.

Truss?

Well, if the criteria for the superlative is whether a PM managed to unite nearly every British citizen to one cause…

 

[bluethrunthru]

He is desperate now - he can't get the numbers and Mordaunt won't come out for him and thus bring most of her backers with her.

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

it won't change that she was our greatest PM.

Just on the off chance that you meant Thatcher, let's start with the economy.

Thatcher got elected on the back of the Saatchi slogan 'Labour Isn't Working'. This is because there was, at that time, one million unemployed in the UK. For Friedman and Hayek [her 'go to' economists], the focus of macreconomic theory should be on controlling inflation. So Thatcher raised interest rates. This should lower demand as it then costs more to borrow money. Unfortunately, those higher interest rates attracted foreign capital, driving up the value of the British pound and making British exports uncompetitive.

The result was a huge recession. Unemployment soared to 3.3 million people, a significant chunk of British manufacturing was destroyed, and many traditional industrial centres were devastated.

Okay, so how about giving people a chance to own their own council houses?

Here is John Gray on that:

'...the selling-off of council houses to their tenants is often praised as a Thatcherite success story.

But in social and economic terms, the decimation of municipal housing was one of the chief elements in the emergence of a neoliberal dependency culture. Spending on housing benefit during 1996-7 was estimated at over £11 billion. This is 1.5 per cent of Britain's gross domestic product and over ten times the total cost of housing benefits in 1979-80. Public expenditure on social housing was replaced, many times over, by rent rebates and assistance with the payments of mortgages. The price of privatizing municipal housing in Britain has been a colossal increase in welfare dependency.'

Hmmn. How about education then?

In her A Memoir: People and Places, the late Baroness Warnock (a philosopher and former headmistress of Oxford High School) wrote this:

‘...the condition to which higher education was reduced was, I think, one of the worst effects of Thatcherism…the concept of learning, the respect for higher education for its own sake, as something intrinsically worth having, an essential part of any civilised society, had been thrown out; and this largely because of her own detestation of academics.’

And what of Thatcher's famous claim that ‘there’s no such thing as society’?

Well, the neoliberal form of capitalism that she favoured narrowly redefines human beings as rational economic actors, members of the species homo economicus. In doing so each of us comes to be understood as an individual entrepreneur in competition with others. The self becomes, in effect, ‘Me, Inc.’

Small wonder then that such a deformed and atomized view of humanity, one that is neglectful of communal well-being and corrosive of family life, should have eventually resulted in much higher divorce rates, as well as an epidemic of loneliness and relative isolation (remember that this is a consequence of more than four decades of neoliberalism),with depression the most commonly treated condition by the NHS.

Hopefully, what I have posted is already sufficient to flag up Thatcher as possibly the worst PM we have ever had, until Truss that is.

 

[Len Rum]

it won't change that she was our greatest PM.

Wot, Maggie greater than:
Charles Grey?
Robert Peel?
Benjamin Disraeli?
William Ewart Gladstone?
David Lloyd George?

Discuss in no less than a thousand words.

 

[BlueMoonday]

£4.9 bn lost to Covid loan fraud under Rishi's watch. GE is needed, I know we vote for the MP not the leader but he wasn't leader at the last GE.

 

[Bodicoteblue]

Just on the off chance that you meant Thatcher, let's start with the economy.

Thatcher got elected on the back of the Saatchi slogan 'Labour Isn't Working'. This is because there was, at that time, one million unemployed in the UK. For Friedman and Hayek [her 'go to' economists], the focus of macreconomic theory should be on controlling inflation. So Thatcher raised interest rates. This should lower demand as it then costs more to borrow money. Unfortunately, those higher interest rates attracted foreign capital, driving up the value of the British pound and making British exports uncompetitive.

The result was a huge recession. Unemployment soared to 3.3 million people, a significant chunk of British manufacturing was destroyed, and many traditional industrial centres were devastated.

Okay, so how about giving people a chance to own their own council houses?

Here is John Gray on that:

'...the selling-off of council houses to their tenants is often praised as a Thatcherite success story.

But in social and economic terms, the decimation of municipal housing was one of the chief elements in the emergence of a neoliberal dependency culture. Spending on housing benefit during 1996-7 was estimated at over £11 billion. This is 1.5 per cent of Britain's gross domestic product and over ten times the total cost of housing benefits in 1979-80. Public expenditure on social housing was replaced, many times over, by rent rebates and assistance with the payments of mortgages. The price of privatizing municipal housing in Britain has been a colossal increase in welfare dependency.'

Hmmn. How about education then?

In her A Memoir: People and Places, the late Baroness Warnock (a philosopher and former headmistress of Oxford High School) wrote this:

‘...the condition to which higher education was reduced was, I think, one of the worst effects of Thatcherism…the concept of learning, the respect for higher education for its own sake, as something intrinsically worth having, an essential part of any civilised society, had been thrown out; and this largely because of her own detestation of academics.’

And what of Thatcher's famous claim that ‘there’s no such thing as society’?

Well, the neoliberal form of capitalism that she favoured narrowly redefines human beings as rational economic actors, members of the species homo economicus. In doing so each of us comes to be understood as an individual entrepreneur in competition with others. The self becomes, in effect, ‘Me, Inc.’

Small wonder then that such a deformed and atomized view of humanity, one that is neglectful of communal well-being and corrosive of family life, should have eventually resulted in much higher divorce rates, as well as an epidemic of loneliness and relative isolation (remember that this is a consequence of more than four decades of neoliberalism),with depression the most commonly treated condition by the NHS.

Hopefully, what I have posted is already sufficient to flag up Thatcher as possibly the worst PM we have ever had, until Truss that is.

Yeah…..but she got all the big calls right!

 

[somapop]

Imagine the utter hell of being stuck next to a guy like this in a pub....

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

Just on the off chance that you meant Thatcher, let's start with the economy.

Thatcher got elected on the back of the Saatchi slogan 'Labour Isn't Working'. This is because there was, at that time, one million unemployed in the UK. For Friedman and Hayek [her 'go to' economists], the focus of macreconomic theory should be on controlling inflation. So Thatcher raised interest rates. This should lower demand as it then costs more to borrow money. Unfortunately, those higher interest rates attracted foreign capital, driving up the value of the British pound and making British exports uncompetitive.

The result was a huge recession. Unemployment soared to 3.3 million people, a significant chunk of British manufacturing was destroyed, and many traditional industrial centres were devastated.

Okay, so how about giving people a chance to own their own council houses?

Here is John Gray on that:

'...the selling-off of council houses to their tenants is often praised as a Thatcherite success story.

But in social and economic terms, the decimation of municipal housing was one of the chief elements in the emergence of a neoliberal dependency culture. Spending on housing benefit during 1996-7 was estimated at over £11 billion. This is 1.5 per cent of Britain's gross domestic product and over ten times the total cost of housing benefits in 1979-80. Public expenditure on social housing was replaced, many times over, by rent rebates and assistance with the payments of mortgages. The price of privatizing municipal housing in Britain has been a colossal increase in welfare dependency.'

Hmmn. How about education then?

In her A Memoir: People and Places, the late Baroness Warnock (a philosopher and former headmistress of Oxford High School) wrote this:

‘...the condition to which higher education was reduced was, I think, one of the worst effects of Thatcherism…the concept of learning, the respect for higher education for its own sake, as something intrinsically worth having, an essential part of any civilised society, had been thrown out; and this largely because of her own detestation of academics.’

And what of Thatcher's famous claim that ‘there’s no such thing as society’?

Well, the neoliberal form of capitalism that she favoured narrowly redefines human beings as rational economic actors, members of the species homo economicus. In doing so each of us comes to be understood as an individual entrepreneur in competition with others. The self becomes, in effect, ‘Me, Inc.’

Small wonder then that such a deformed and atomized view of humanity, one that is neglectful of communal well-being and corrosive of family life, should have eventually resulted in much higher divorce rates, as well as an epidemic of loneliness and relative isolation (remember that this is a consequence of more than four decades of neoliberalism),with depression the most commonly treated condition by the NHS.

Hopefully, what I have posted is already sufficient to flag up Thatcher as possibly the worst PM we have ever had, until Truss that is.

Rascal? Is that you?

 

[Len Rum]

The scary result.
Sunak and Blojo make it to the final two.
The mp's vote splits roughly:
Sunk 200
Blojo 100
The members vote for Blojo.
Then you will see the mother of all fcukin meltdowns of the Tory party.
Oh and the UK economy will tank.

 

[Len Rum]

Just on the off chance that you meant Thatcher, let's start with the economy.

Thatcher got elected on the back of the Saatchi slogan 'Labour Isn't Working'. This is because there was, at that time, one million unemployed in the UK. For Friedman and Hayek [her 'go to' economists], the focus of macreconomic theory should be on controlling inflation. So Thatcher raised interest rates. This should lower demand as it then costs more to borrow money. Unfortunately, those higher interest rates attracted foreign capital, driving up the value of the British pound and making British exports uncompetitive.

The result was a huge recession. Unemployment soared to 3.3 million people, a significant chunk of British manufacturing was destroyed, and many traditional industrial centres were devastated.

Okay, so how about giving people a chance to own their own council houses?

Here is John Gray on that:

'...the selling-off of council houses to their tenants is often praised as a Thatcherite success story.

But in social and economic terms, the decimation of municipal housing was one of the chief elements in the emergence of a neoliberal dependency culture. Spending on housing benefit during 1996-7 was estimated at over £11 billion. This is 1.5 per cent of Britain's gross domestic product and over ten times the total cost of housing benefits in 1979-80. Public expenditure on social housing was replaced, many times over, by rent rebates and assistance with the payments of mortgages. The price of privatizing municipal housing in Britain has been a colossal increase in welfare dependency.'

Hmmn. How about education then?

In her A Memoir: People and Places, the late Baroness Warnock (a philosopher and former headmistress of Oxford High School) wrote this:

‘...the condition to which higher education was reduced was, I think, one of the worst effects of Thatcherism…the concept of learning, the respect for higher education for its own sake, as something intrinsically worth having, an essential part of any civilised society, had been thrown out; and this largely because of her own detestation of academics.’

And what of Thatcher's famous claim that ‘there’s no such thing as society’?

Well, the neoliberal form of capitalism that she favoured narrowly redefines human beings as rational economic actors, members of the species homo economicus. In doing so each of us comes to be understood as an individual entrepreneur in competition with others. The self becomes, in effect, ‘Me, Inc.’

Small wonder then that such a deformed and atomized view of humanity, one that is neglectful of communal well-being and corrosive of family life, should have eventually resulted in much higher divorce rates, as well as an epidemic of loneliness and relative isolation (remember that this is a consequence of more than four decades of neoliberalism),with depression the most commonly treated condition by the NHS.

Hopefully, what I have posted is already sufficient to flag up Thatcher as possibly the worst PM we have ever had, until Truss that is.

Not to mention the fact that she also decimated public services.
She destroyed communities and industries and never replaced them with anything ( leaving that too the free market).
She sold off the family silver and pissed away the North Sea oil revenues to finance her neoliberal nightmare.
She tore things down but left nothing in their place.
We are still suffering from her legacy today.