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T O P I C R E V I E W
lemonade kid
Posted - 14/04/2013 : 20:00:38 I know...here I go again!
Thatcher's Last Wish: Another Clunker from the Iron Lady
President George H. W. Bush presents Margaret Thatcher with the Presidential Medal of Freedom: honors seems more honorable if they come from someone else. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The news today is that a group of supporters of Margaret Thatcher are pushing a plan to establish a museum and library as a permanent memorial to her. It is clear that the plan, which would establish a first in British politics, has been long in the making and that it not only had Thatcher’s approval but she herself largely instigated the idea. This is another clunker from the Iron Lady – a final terrible idea from a woman who, pace all current hagiography, will be remembered as one of the worst political leaders in modern British history.
Let’s be clear first on the larger politics. As someone who served as a Fleet Street commentator in the late 1970s, I fully recognize that she made progress on some issues, not least trade union dominance of the economy. But her predecessor Jim Callaghan would undoubtedly have tackled these same issues had he been reelected and he would have dealt with them in a perhaps more effective, and certainly less divisive, way.The voters who elected Thatcher in 1979 were motivated powerfully by humiliation at the UK economy’s constant loss of position in global competition since the early 1950s. So how did Thatcher do in reversing the trend and what in particular did she do to improve the UK’s trade position? The eulogizers are quiet on the subject. Advisedly so. The fact is that under Thatcherism the UK’s trade position went from the merely weak to the totally disastrous. The UK ran a current account surplus of 0.6 percent of GDP in 1978, the last full year before Thatcher came to office. As of 1989, the last full year before she was ousted by her own party in May of 1990, the current account DEFICIT had reached an appalling 3.9 percent of GDP.
In the meantime Thatcher presided over a savage program to destroy the UK’s core exporting industries and, with wholesale financial deregulation, laid the groundwork for the catastrophic financial bubbles of more recent times. She was smitten by the erroneous notion that advanced nations should leave “rust bucket” industries behind and move to a postindustrial model. Not a view shared by Germany, which has now long eclipsed the UK as Europe’s premier economy. It is a fallacy I have consistently attacked since the 1980s and indeed devoted a whole book to in 1999 (In Praise of Hard Industries: Why Manufacturing, Not the Information Economy, Is the Key to Future Prosperity).
As for the Thatcher museum and library this is a characteristically egotistical Thatcherite project at odds with British tradition. The British after all put a high value on modesty and even the most capable of them have traditionally left it to others to sing their praises.
The fear now is that she has established a precedent that future British political leaders will feel compelled to follow, and in so doing will render politics in London as dysfunctionally money-ridden as politics in Washington already is.
Thatcher apparently was much impressed with the Reagan Presidential Library. But why? Such memorials typically involve pandering to wealthy donors and transnational corporations — and the pandering typically begins long before the honoree leaves office. Not the least of the problems is that many of the corporations involved have at best no loyalty to the nation and some are indeed foreign and almost by definition have a clear conflict of interest.
What we know for sure is that the Reagan library was made possible in large measure by General Electric. Although it is not yet apparent to most Americans, General Electric has played a starring role in the enfeeblement of the United States. A key charge is that GE has led corporate America in the torching of America’s once peerless industrial base on the funeral pyre of globalism. It has done this principally by transferring many of America’s most advanced production technologies, including aerospace technologies, to foreign production partners. These partners, located mainly in East Asia, have undertaken to low-ball their prices and have thereby boosted GE’s quarterly earnings, but at the cost of hollowing out the American industrial base. You may not have seen much written about this subject in recent years but the trend is acutely apparent in U.S. trade figures. With its industrial base almost gone, America has consistently in recent years run a current account deficit of 4 to 6 percent of GDP – the weakest trade performance of any major nation in history. The geopolitical consequences could hardly be more disastrous as the United States has come increasingly to depend on funding from such creditor nations as China and Japan. It is not an exaggeration to say that America’s role now has been reduced to borrowing from China to save the world from China.
The first presidential library was built by Franklin Delano Roosevelt but at least it was a relatively modest affair and, more important, he had the decency to do it with his own money. In recent decades succeeding presidents have vied with one another for the title of largest and most impressive presidential library. For the record the title now seems to be held by Bill Clinton but how could a great nation have been brought so low?
As Winston Churchill once said, “The price of greatness is responsibility.” Would Churchill be better regarded today had he spent any of his time in office drumming up support for a memorial to himself? For that that matter, would George Washington? be held in higher regard today had he pandered to well-financed fakes and political finaglers in securing a big presidential museum for himself? In fact the concept of a presidential library is quite modern. Gwendolyn Montgomery The only reason you debunk her is because she was a Conservative and stood for conservative values. If you read about her, you will find that she did a lot [...]
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Old hippies never die, they just ramble on. -lk
2 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First)
stewart
Posted - 15/04/2013 : 02:04:18 it's in the uk press now
sounds like a place where you could get your brain washed
John9
Posted - 14/04/2013 : 20:44:11 And here's a slightly more balanced judgement from our own David Cannadine ( presently of Princeton).......writing in the New York Times:
