Today Kemi Badenoch accused Andy Burnham of being stuck in the past. Bit rich because it’s the Tories who haven’t moved on since Margaret Thatcher not Burnham. Andy Burnham has correctly identified why Britain hasn’t made any progress and whereby successive governments have run up large debts to survive. The Tories are still pedaling out and supporting Thatcherism after 40 years even though it’s failure was proved within a decade. Badenoch and her Tories are bereft of any ideas that challenge Thatcherism and for the most part they still support her causes of privatisations even though they are now largely unpopular and discredited. So it’s Badenoch and the Tories who are outdated and unwilling to change: it’s certainly not Andy Burnham. Let’s look at what Thatcherism has done to Britain and why successive governments have relied so heavily on Public Borrowing.
Why should Britain be stuck with and put up with outdated Thatcherism
Why should Britain be stuck with an outdated Thatcherism that was imposed on us 40 years ago. Thatcherism is outdated and discredited so why is it still here?
Well firstly it has been supported by successive Tory Governments who still basically support it and don’t want to change it. Then during Blair’s New Labour experiment it went largely ignored and unchallenged for sake of convenience. So basically Britain has had to put up with these changes for 40+ years because no government has been strong enough to do anything about it. Burnham is right in this. Britain’s demise can be traced back to Thatcherism. Basically Thatcher’s ideas were to sell off public services to private enterprise. This situation still pervades Badenoch’s thinking today. Tax cuts have always been Tory policy and reducing public services a priority. However whst people were bot informed of was that Governments needs an income to do what they need to do and support the NHS. Without an income governments are forced to borrow money for their projects. This can be done in 2 ways higher taxes or higher public borrowing. The utilities like gas, electricity, water and the railways all make money which when publicly owned generates an income and in most cases profits too which can be used to fund NHS and reduce public borrowing. Without an income British governments have to borrow money. It’s that simple. If you have no income you may borrow or buy on credit up to a point where you are struggling with the repayments and if you have no money coming in then you will eventually be overwhelmed. Thatcher sold off Britain’s assets which led to successive governments struggling to raise money and struggling with debt. Now do you finally understand why Thatcher’s privatisations were bad for Britain and are still bad for Britain and will be as long as we stick with Thatcherism. Thatcherism hasn’t gone away. It’s still here and we are burdened by it still.