When Margaret Thatcher was asked about her greatest Achevement, she said "New Labour", why she said that

Question

Is that also reason she had photo op with Gordon brown

Answer 1

i would find it difficult to associate Margaret Thatcher, the country best leader since Winston Churchill, with New Labour. The meeting with Gordon Brown was a publicity coup for them, and what she was doing there is any ones guess. And i confess that her words must have had a double meaning, because she sure as h**l wouldn't have meant that they are the best thing since sliced bread.

Answer 2

Margaret Thatcher is responsible for the high standard of living we now enjoy.

She completely revitalised the country and was responsible for changing the whole face of politics.

Far from exploiting the "working class" she created a new social mobility which allowed the lower classes to massively increase their prosperity. She did take on and beat the trade unions, but when you think that the trade union movement had brought down two governments, one Tory, one labour, if democracy was to be preserved they had to be brought to heel.

That Scargill was stupid enough to walk straight into her trap says a lot about his naivety. She needed to take on a big union, and Scargill obliged.

Effectively she destroyed the "working class" changing them in to property owning middle class and so destroyed the traditional Labour Vote.

She did this so effectively that we no longer have any socialist parties in the UK, the LibDems being the closest thing.

It is interesting to note that although Blair etc had condemned all her anti trade union legislation when in opposition, when they got into power they did not repeal any of it!

In fact New Labour adopted virtually all the Conservative policies with the exception of the modernising of the NHS.

That was New Labour alone that came up with the policies that have reduced health care in this country to the lowest  level of any developed country.

Is there a difference between Labour and Conservative?

Yes. Mostly the Tories are conviction politicians, the vast majority of whom have taken substantial pay cuts to become MPs. The Labour MPs on the other hand apart from the odd professionals, have got a substantial pay rise by becoming MPs.

Interestingly we keep hearing about Tory sleaze but with the exception of taking a couple of grand to raise a question in the house, most of it was the very human trait of not keeping your trousers on.

Labour on the other hand, from the Bernie Ecclestone affair (£1,000,000 bribe not to ban tobacco ads in F1) through Mandelson (fraud and Bribery, twice forced to resign then rewarded for his criminality with a job carrying a higher salary than the PM) to the Cash for Honours scandal (Police Statement: "After a thorough investigation we are unable to find sufficient proof to bring a criminal prosecution". Not a great surprise there then. We all know it was going on though) have been mired in one financial scandal after another.

So there we have the difference in a nutshell.   The Tories have a few adulterers in their ranks (A lot fewer than in the general population, but standards are standards)

New Labour on the other hand is the best government money can buy. Provided you can afford them of course.

197 new taxes taking us to the highest taxed of the G8 nations.

So there is the other difference. Under the Tories taxes go down. Under New Labour they go up and up and up.

I keep seeing mentions of the ERM disaster. Lets not forget that going into the ERM, the forerunner of the Euro, was a policy that had cross party support. It wouldn't have mattered who was in power, we would have gone into it anyway!

At least that is one Lesson that Brown learnt!

Gavin obviously doesn't understand that it is impossible to "keep unemployment high". What Margaret Thatcher did was force British industry to modernise and become efficient. Yes that led to high unemployment for a time. It also led to the strongest economy in Europe and a higher standard of living for everybody. Without the actions she took this country would have been bankrupt by now. Remember Wilson had already taken us to the point where we were bailed out by the IMF!

Open your eyes Gavin and look at the facts. You obviously lost your job. So did I. Best thing that ever happened to me because I was forced to work for myself and I've never looked back.

Answer 3

margaret thatcher was the best PM we have ever had.

gavin . you are talking utter rubbish. graham n is right.

Answer 4

Your link is to some rigmarole of a blog that I can't frankly be bothered to read.  Mrs Thatcher absolutely ruined this country, she humiliated working people, conned the slightly better-off of them into buying their council houses and took us all into the utterly unnecessary gung-ho and tragic Falklands war.

Answer 5

short answer... she was thinking of taking up stand up comedy!!

Answer 6

Because Blair moved so far to the right and appears to have taken the ideas of MT in generating an unfair society based upon the exploitation of greed.

Answer 7

Thatcherism served the interests of rich businessmen at the expense of the working classes.

New Labour Blairism served the interests of rich businessmen at the expense of the working classes.

It's no different under Gordon Brown - see imminent abolition of 10p tax rate.

She has a point.

lol neither was I thankfully, but it looks like Graham N wasn't around under Thatcher when unemployment was deliberately kept as high as 20% in some parts of the UK so that workers were forced to accept poor pay and working conditions.  How anyone can celebrate that is beyond me.

As for scandal, Thatcher's Tories were no better than Blair's - the Westland affair, arms to Iraq, the Malaysian Pergau Dam scandal, etc.  Though t*t-for-tat mudslinging doesn't get you anywhere.

If you're looking for the root cause of today's societies ills and economic problems, look no further than Thatcherism, just as Reaganomics is the root cause of the US economy's troubles.  

If you're looking for the root cause of the social housing problem in the UK, or of the railways problem, or of the NHS problem, or of the utilities problem, or of the consumer debt problem, or of the benefits system problem, or of the poverty problem, or of the crime / law and order problem, or of the breakdown of society problem, or of the immigration problem, look no further than Thatcherism.

lol I wasn't working then so it's not personal with me.  My eyes are open to the facts.  Britain is a low wage low skill economy, with one of the highest rates of crime and child poverty in the industrialised world - which makes these claims about a strong economy pretty hollow.

It's very easy to keep unemployment high - you make a load of people unemployed and don't put in place the means for them to find alternative work, then you hide them away under a column marked "incapacity benefit".  And people wonder why there's benefits cheats in 2008 - they're just doing what Thatcher encouraged their parents to do.

That's the trouble with soulless capitalists - they deal in numbers, not people.

Heating is considered a basic human need.  If the people who fought and died for Britain were alive today to see how our governments have conspired to allow privately owned utilities companies to charge such high shareholder-friendly prices that our pensioners are literally freezing to death, they'd be appalled.

No good to you living in one of the 'richest' countries in the world if you're an old lady shivering in winter while most of the wealth is in the hands of a tiny minority of people.  The Tory mantra of "sharing the proceeds of growth" really is laughable.

Child poverty

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_ch...

Crime

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_to...

Human Development Index

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_hu...

If we've got the 'strongest' economy in Europe why are 10 other European countries above us in the Human Development Index?

Answer 8

no, her best achievement was becoming a female PM.

Is there a link for your above comment?

Edit:

Of course they are, they are all the same stealing and sharing each others policies. BTW I looked at the link, is this substantiated by another source?

Answer 9

Because she was a Conservative and they talk nonsense.

Answer 10

You are certainly not her greatest achievement. You sound like a Native bearer in a Tarzan film. "Me not go 'long de path no more. Bad men live dere."