Tony Blair’s broadside in the New Statesman magazine against Ed Miliband for being out of touch with mainstream opinion could not be more timely, given the distasteful, ungenerous and unChristian attacks on Lady Thatcher by so many on the Left.
In his article, the former Prime Minister identified one key reason for the Labour Party’s current failings: its bovine adherence to the out-of-date and dangerous policies that were destroying Britain before Mrs Thatcher became Premier.
Blair understands how her brave and imaginative ideas rescued the country by destroying the power of the unions, encouraging aspiration — and helping to liberate millions of people from state control.
Write caption hereHe appreciates that Lady Thatcher understood the values of the British nation — a people inherently conservative and who abhor the undemocratic, anti-aspirational aspects of socialism.
He can see, too, that Miliband is reverting to old Labour ways — and panders to the Left who so hated Lady Thatcher for destroying their power base and keeping their party in opposition for 18 years.
The Labour leader’s incessant whingeing about ‘the cuts’ is intended to please the old Left and the union barons who elected him. But because he does not offer any solutions to the problem of the debt engulfing Britain, he is reducing Labour to being merely a party of protest as opposed to a responsible alternative government.
Blair appreciates that Lady Thatcher understood the values of the British nation - a people inherently conservativeWhat’s more, the vulgar rage of the past few days has exposed the deeply ugly side of this old-style socialism that Blair is warning about — a shameful lack of humanity.
I’m not talking about those ignorant teenagers (who weren’t even born when Mrs Thatcher rebuilt this country) who are buying the song Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead. No, it is a rump of Labour MPs and peers who are insulting her memory.
These men and women must never be allowed to forget that they were defeated by Lady Thatcher in three general elections, through the democratic process.
Bilious: Glenda Jackson during Thatcher tributes in the CommonsEqually galling for them is that they realise Labour won in 1997 only because the Labour Party chose as its leader a virtual conservative — Mr Blair.
He recognised the genius of Mrs Thatcher’s transformation of Britain and accepted her new anti-socialist consensus.
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But when the Labour government under Gordon Brown returned to its old, discredited policies after 2007, it paid the price — as it did in 1979 — for running Britain into the ground.
Mr Miliband and his shadow ministers still fail to understand the values and aspirations of Britain’s hard-working families. This failing is combined with a meanness of spirit.
You have only to examine the behaviour of John Prescott, who cheered Glenda Jackson for her bilious attack on Lady Thatcher, or Lord Kinnock (a man whose absurdity was exposed by his acceptance of a peerage after a lifetime of demanding that the House of Lords be abolished) who has grandstanded his refusal to attend her funeral.
Of course, there are those on the Left who have behaved decently following the death of a political rival. But their obnoxious colleagues have shown yet again which is the real nasty party.
Not only have the Left’s moral and political limitations been exposed by the death of Lady Thatcher, the Right has been discomfited, too. Many Tory donors are preparing to give money to Ukip because it embraces a Thatcherite agenda. There is a lesson for David Cameron from Lady Thatcher: Elections aren’t won by being liked, but by getting voters to respect you and your convictions.
This youth post madnessHow absurd that public money was to be used to pay part of the salary of a coarse and poorly educated teenage girl to represent the views of ‘youth’ to the police.
Thankfully, she has resigned following the disclosure of odious remarks she made on social media sites about issues such as drug-taking and promiscuous sex.
But this story highlights another madness. Five months after they were elected, has any police commissioner actually achieved anything — other than to spend yet more of the public’s money?
This week, a court in Indonesia upheld the death sentence imposed on British drug-smuggler Lindsay Sandiford. The country takes drug crime very seriously, as Sandiford knew very well. Therefore, I hope our Foreign Secretary will not humiliate himself and Britain by begging for her to have special treatment. It is not our place to tell another country what laws it should or should not have.
It's time more knights fell on their swordsJames Crosby, an architect of the collapse of HBOS, has set a refreshing precedent by giving up a third of his annual £580,000 pension and asking for his knighthood to be revoked. We await similar sacrifices by his partners in mischief, former chairman Lord Stevenson (a friend of Peter Mandelson) and former chief executive Andy Hornby. Meanwhile, shouldn’t some other undeserved knights do the same? None is less deserving than ‘Sir’ David Nicholson, who presided over the Mid-Staffordshire health scandal and now runs the NHS.
James Crosby has offered to hand back his knighthoodScottish nationalists say that if Scotland ever becomes independent, they would want to retain the Bank of England as the country’s lender of last resort. What a cheek! If their economy sank — as it might — the liability should not fall on England’s central bank. It reveals, I suspect, their fears that Scotland could go belly up after any divorce from England. What about their old slogan of Scotland ‘Independent in Europe’ — which would mean joining the euro and answering to the European Central Bank?
Sir Winston Churchill was divisive and was hated by many, as well as adored Winston had enemies, tooHow absurd for people to complain that the Queen decided to attend Lady Thatcher’s funeral. They said it was natural for her go to Churchill’s in 1965, because he was not ‘divisive’. What?
Tell that to people in South Wales, especially in Tonypandy, who still loathe him because he sent troops to quell colliery protests in 1910; or to the TUC, who hated him for breaking the general strike in 1926; or to those who suffered because of his disastrous Dardanelles campaign as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915.
Churchill and Mrs Thatcher had much in common. Both were great, both divided opinion, both made mistakes, both saved their country, and both deserved high honours in death.
Desperate to find ways of staying solvent, Greece is demanding £138 billion from Germany in reparations for pillaging the country in World War II. They may have a point, though I suspect German taxpayers have already pumped more than that into Greece in recent years. Even with such a sum, the Greeks would still be £175 billion short of paying off their debt. I wonder what Portugal might do to find a rescue package. They can’t go begging to Berlin because Hitler never reached Lisbon.
