Andy Beckett's Blog, page 6

Margaret Thatcher set Britain’s decline in motion – so why can’t politics exorcise her ghost? | Andy Beckett

MPs on all sides pay homage, while her failures – which lie behind many of the crises we face today – are forgotten

An old spectre is haunting Britain yet again – the spectre of Thatcherism. Although she became Tory leader almost half a century ago and was sacked by her party in 1990, since when this country has changed hugely, Margaret Thatcher still obsesses the Tories. Rishi Sunak says he is a Thatcherite, and so do almost all those jostling to replace him: Kemi Badenoch, Penny Mordaunt, Priti Patel, James Cleverly, Grant Shapps and Suella Braverman.

Most other Conservative MPs remain Thatcherite in their basic assumptions: about the need to deregulate markets, regulate the lives of the poor, pursue aggressively nationalistic policies abroad and fight domestic culture wars. This outlook is shared by many Tory members and voters, most rightwing thinktanks and almost the entire rightwing media. Meanwhile the party’s strengthening rival, Reform UK, sounds increasingly Thatcherite, campaigning against “record taxes, wasteful government spending and nanny state regulations”. Arguably, her hegemony is more complete now in conservative parts of Britain than it ever was during her contentious leadership, about which the right was often divided.

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Britain is usually excited when it boots out a tired old government. Not this time | Andy Beckett

There is a disconnect between the UK’s main two political parties and their supporters – and its origins go back much further than the past few years

Why are so many voters so unsatisfied with Britain’s main parties? In the opinion polls, despite Labour’s strong lead, their combined support is low by historic standards. Barely two-thirds of people say they will vote for them. One poll from this weekend predicted the Conservatives’ worst ever election result: only 98 seats. Meanwhile Labour’s membership is falling fast. Also, unusually, the main parties’ leaders are unpopular at the same time. While Rishi Sunak is one of the least-liked prime ministers ever, Keir Starmer looks likely to succeed him with his personal ratings firmly negative and trending downwards. The unacceptable replaced by the unpalatable.

This is not how Britain is meant to move towards a new political era. In the run-up to 1964, 1979 and 1997 – our three most mythologised modern changes of government – there was widespread excitement about the administration in waiting. There was also keen anticipation across the right before the 2010 election, until Cleggmania and a muddled Conservative campaign produced a hung parliament. In all four cases, a common desire to be rid of a tired old government was at least partially transformed into enthusiasm for the likely new one.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist. His new book, The Searchers: Five Rebels, Their Dream of a Different Britain, and Their Many Enemies, will be published in May

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The left is smeared as the angry mob again and again. In reality, it is the target of political violence | Andy Beckett

These threats don’t just seek to intimidate leftwing politicians, it makes them seem a risk to voters, too

In Britain and other supposedly calm democracies, the ascent of leftwing politicians can arouse unusual fears of violence. Many conservatives and centrists associate the left with mobs, intimidation and revolutionary struggle. For some on the right, leftwing politics of any sort is a kind of violence, with the upsetting of the traditional order that it promises.

Such fears are not always groundless. But more often they are exaggerated, sometimes deliberately, in order to smear the left as fanatical and dangerous. In reality, the left always contains plenty of pacifists and other principled opponents of the use of force – life’s “herbivores”, as the writer Michael Frayn called them in a perceptive 1963 essay.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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MPs, understand this: protests are inevitable when you fail to represent the people | Andy Beckett

Politics is not just an activity conducted in Westminster corridors, with the voters locked out – as marches over the climate crisis and Gaza show

Where should politics happen? For most MPs, accustomed to the Palace of Westminster’s inward-looking spaces and rituals, the answer is obvious. In parliament and its associated offices, corridors, committee rooms, bars and tea rooms; in Downing Street and its surrounding maze of ministries; and in the parts of the media that mould political opinion.

This country is supposed to be a representative democracy. Except for very occasional referendums, periodic elections, voxpops and opinion polls, or perhaps the odd exchange with their MP, voters are not meant to be directly involved. A sign of a healthy political system, we are often told, is one where most people get on with their lives and leave politics to the professionals.

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Anderson and Braverman shout loudest, but one man has led the toxification of the Tories: Michael Gove | Andy Beckett

As an influential constant in government and policy formation, Gove has been key to the process of rightwing radicalisation

On the ever more common journey from the centre right to the far right, there are two contrasting routes conservative parties can follow. One is to welcome in demagogues such as Lee Anderson and Suella Braverman, and to borrow or indulge their extreme ideas, or only half-condemn them – thus publicising them further – in the hope that this cynical process will attract a wider range of reactionary voters. In countries widely thought of as nostalgic and disillusioned, such as contemporary Britain, it is assumed that there are a lot of these voters, however much the Tories’ terrible poll ratings suggest the contrary.

For a week now, the Conservatives’ contortions and divisions over Anderson’s toxic conspiracy theories have demonstrated the political risks of the demagogue approach. However, there is another way for rightwing parties to radicalise that is more subtle, less controversial and often more successful. It involves more mainstream, less abrasive conservative politicians – people generally regarded and presented by the media as reasonable – exploring and promoting hard-right ideas and turning them into policies, while insisting that nothing harsh or reckless is going on.

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The frightening thing is not that Tories are paraded as more fiscally competent. It’s that even Labour believes it | Andy Beckett

Abandoning its £28bn green plan betrays a lack of self-belief that has long bedevilled the party – a flaw it must address

In our punitive politics, the Labour party is almost always on probation. You can see it in Keir Starmer’s sometimes jumpy public manner, in the party’s dumping or scaling down of policies as a general election nears, and in its often cautious approach in power, even when it has a commanding majority.

Labour’s lingering insecurity and its related lack of credibility as a governing party in the eyes of others are clearest in how it handles, or is believed to handle, the public finances. State spending, investment, borrowing and deficits can seem dry topics. But they are also treacherous ones for the party which, since its founding, has been torn between seeking financial respectability – the terms of which are usually defined by establishment interests and Labour’s political enemies – and using government to create a more equal society.

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Thatcher was right: Tory moderates have no power over the party’s ruthless rightwing extremists | Andy Beckett

The civilising influence of the ‘wets’ is a myth. The party’s angriest elements always end up back in the driving seat

For Tory moderates – assuming some still exist – these ought to be quietly promising times. Their party’s extremists have made a huge mess of the last four Conservative governments, both as participants and critics. They may have discredited radical rightwing politics in the eyes of most voters for many years to come.

The failure of Brexit, which many Tory moderates predicted, and of populist Conservatism’s other miracle cures, may see the Tory right decimated at the coming election: favourable circumstances, you might think, for moderates to shape any party rebuilding.

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After 14 years of Tory misrule, voters will crave a fresh start. That may be a blessing for Starmer – or a curse | Andy Beckett

British politics has been drained of credibility. The Labour leader could turn low expectations to his advantage – for a time

The often messy end of a party’s long hold on power is one of the key rituals of British politics. Voters who made that party’s ascendancy possible now get revenge on ministers who have disappointed them. Journalists get lots of dramatic downfall stories. A new regime finally enters Downing Street, with fresher protagonists and policies. Our electoral system, which has often helped keep the old regime in office too long by disproportionately rewarding its share of the vote, suddenly seems vindicated. And the country feels renewed, for a few months at least.

The years within living memory when such transformations have happened are mythologised by the main parties and their most loyal supporters: 1945, 1964 and 1997 for Labour’s return to power after long absences; 1979 and 2010 for comparable Tory breakthroughs. In many ways, these changes of government prevent our rigid old democracy from stiffening up entirely.

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A lesson from Harold Wilson for Keir Starmer: don’t let the right undermine Labour’s achievements | Andy Beckett

Millions of lives were improved by reforms in the 1960s and 70s, from anti-racism laws to equal pay – yet many voters see his tenure as a failure

Labour leaders looking to cite successful predecessors, at least in the most obvious electoral sense, don’t have many to choose from. Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair: the old-fashioned ring of those first three names tells us how long ago most of Labour’s sporadic premierships were. It is now 50 years since a general election was won by a Labour leader other than Blair.

Successful Labour governments have been even rarer, if we measure success by how they are remembered. Media bias against the party, the more subtle negativity of many historians and the critical eyes of many Labour voters, members and politicians: all these have combined for decades to highlight the party’s failures in office and downgrade its achievements.

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Britain’s rich are living in a golden era. Labour should not be scared to end it | Andy Beckett

The wealthy elite’s dominance of our impoverished society is often seen as inevitable, even natural – but their spell can be broken

For millions of Britons, this feels more and more like a poor country. Essentials such as heating and regular meals are increasingly unaffordable. Public services are struggling, and avoided by many of those who can afford to. Old infrastructure such as schools and hospitals is visibly crumbling. Even “middle-income Brits”, the Resolution Foundation reported this week, “are now 20% poorer than their peers in Germany”.

Yet for a substantial minority of other Britons, life is ever more luxurious. “The big story of the last 40 years has been of private wealth racing ahead,” says the thinktank, “rising from around three times to more than seven times [the size] of GDP.” This long boom for the rich is ever more visible: in the property prices of elite postcodes; in the proliferation of supercars and SUVs; and in the growing parts of cities and smart towns and villages given over to fine dining or designer boutiques.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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