Left-wing haters need a lesson in Thatcherism

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3 days ago

Deputising for Charles Moore in these pages from time to time is more than enough to make my imposter syndrome run wild, but emulating him by writing a biography of Margaret Thatcher when he has already written a magnificent three volume one, is perhaps inevitably a step too far.
Mine will be published on Thursday but is barely a pamphlet by comparison, and perhaps has a different objective. Its aim is twofold – to introduce her to a new generation, which wasn't alive when she was in power. It's astonishing to realise that, to have ever voted for Margaret Thatcher, you would have to be at least 54 years old. In the 35 years since her fall from power, so many myths have grown up about her that many younger Brits probably think she was responsible for the slaughter of the first born.
There have been only three significant prime ministers since the war whose policies still impact the way we live today – Attlee, Thatcher and Blair. As Tony Benn would have put it, they were each signposts rather than weathervanes. But today's younger generations have been indoctrinated into believing that Margaret Thatcher was privileged and her policies were only ever aimed to benefit the rich. That's presumably why she oversaw the biggest transfer to the working classes in the history of our country – by which I mean the sale of council houses and encouraging ordinary people to buy shares in privatised companies.
People believe she supported the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa because she didn't impose sanctions. In fact, she did more to bring Apartheid to an end than virtually anyone else, as our then Ambassador to South Africa, Robin Renwick, has detailed in his various books. Nelson Mandela personally thanked her for her role in getting him released and bringing the evils of that regime to an end.
According to Left-wing haters, Thatcher did nothing for the environment. Yet it was she who was the first head of government in the world to warn of the dangers of climate change in 1989 – before most people had ever heard of the term. If I was wanting to court controversy, I could also have said she closed down most of the coal industry, something our current Government is urging China and others to do.
That she was a dictator who brooked no dissent is another myth about Lady Thatcher. Yes, she would lead from the front and challenge others to defeat her argument, but there are countless occasions when people did just that and contrary to their fears, their careers prospered. It's how John Major got into the cabinet. A theme of the book is also that although she revelled in being seen as a conviction politician, in reality she was very pragmatic and realised that a bull in a china shop approach rarely achieved the desired results. Trade union reform is a case in point.
Contrary to popular myth, Thatcher was not 'anti-European' and most people who knew her doubt she would have supported Brexit. Her famous Bruges speech, where she said she said 'We haven't successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state only to see them reimposed at a European level' was actually very pro-European if people took the time to read the whole thing.
Did you know that men can have periods and menstruate? Nope, me neither. But that's the latest quackery promoted by the more extreme parts of the trans lobby. Their logic, presumably, is that trans men are men (just as 'transwomen are women'), and as such they continue to menstruate. Bunzl, one of the biggest toiletry suppliers in the UK, has produced an inclusive language guide, God save us.
It recommends that common terms such as 'sanitary', 'hygiene' and 'feminine products' should be replaced with the term 'period products' to avoid offence. Who on earth is supposed to be offended? This sort of ridiculous virtue-signalling idiocy needs to be called out by people across the board, and not just those with Nigel and Farage in their names. Biological men cannot menstruate. Fact. And that's the end of it.
For a Government that repeatedly tells us that it is unashamedly pro-growth, it has spent much of its first year in power introducing policies which achieve the exact opposite, and the chickens are starting to come home to roost. I've lost count of the number of business people I know who have imposed recruitment freezes, had to shed workers or cancel planned pay rises as a result of the decision to increase Employers' National Insurance to 15 per cent and cut the threshold to £5,000, and in addition increase the minimum wage by 6.7 per cent.
There is no form of political or economic sophistry that Rachel Reeves can deploy to persuade us that there measures are anything else but growth killers. Tesco now tell us they're planning for many of their stores to shut an hour earlier as their costs have increased by £235 million, just from the NI hike alone. Proof, were it ever needed, that actions have consequences.
'Margaret Thatcher' by Iain Dale is published on Thursday by Swift Press
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