Ayn Rand versus Julius Evola: The troubling overlap of Libertarians and Fascism

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post talking about the influence of Julius Evola on Fascist thought, and his influence on contemporary culture, especially in the lens of the political situation in the UK and the USA.
Sometimes politics brings together strange bedfellows, which is usually due to an unusual or turbulent set of circumstances. In the 20th century, for example, the unlikely (and short-lived) alliance of the Bolsheviks and the Liberals brought down the Tsar's regime in Russia in early 1917, with the Bolsheviks as the ultimate victors through their own "revolution" (more like a coup) in October the same year. By 1932, Germany was in the middle of a political upheaval that saw the Communists and the Nazis in a kind of joint campaign of chaos and terror against the political mainstream in the middle of an economic meltdown, which saw the Nazis as the victors.
The "postwar consensus" that was established following the turbulence of the Second World War lasted for around thirty years, until a combination of economic factors like "stagflation" brought an opportunity for right-wing economic extremists to take control of the situation.


"Strange bedfellows": Libertarians and Conservatives?

The "economic extremists" were Libertarians, whose ideas of a shrunk-back state and a "pure" form of Capitalism with unfettered market forces had been widely espoused by their icon, Ayn Rand.
In Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, these ideas were being promoted in the UK and USA respectively by two enthusiastic leaders, with the aim of first winning over their own (Conservative and Republican) parties, and then the country.
The ideas of the Libertarians were not popular initially within their own party, as some of their philosophical ideas seemed directly counter to those of traditional conservatives. Firstly, the "postwar consensus" was still considered an established fact not to be challenged, both with the Heath government in the UK and the contemporary Nixon administration in Washington. It was only the discrediting of both these administrations under different circumstances that gave "outsiders" like Thatcher and Reagan a chance of a hearing. By the mid-70s, Thatcher was leader of her party and Reagan was the "poster boy" of the conservative right. Both would soon be leaders of their country, and "de facto" leaders of the Libertarian movement.
Libertarian thought, as espoused by Ayn Rand, is fundamentally against traditional conservative tenets that emphasize the importance of faith, family and country. Rand's sense of Libertarianism is atheistic, materialistic, and individualistic: it sees the world through the eyes of the free-spirited entrepreneur, detached from the fuzzy, old-fashioned values of orthodoxy. Traditional Conservatism is about community, culture and social hierarchy; ideas that would be anathema to an ideological Libertarian. So how did these two sides reach an understanding?
Apart from the changing dynamics of the economy being on the side of the Libertarian narrative, as mentioned above, the "strange bedfellows" of the Libertarian and the Conservative found out that they did have a few things in common, and enough for an understanding of a common goal.

At its core, one of the central tenets of Libertarian thought is that while the state should do as little as possible, it must provide law and order and security. What this means in practice is that it is the defender of property rights, free choice and the rights of people to earn their own money. In other words, the state is in reality the instrument of the wealthy, as the defender of the rights of the status quo. By definition, it will do nothing to change circumstances to benefit those who are doing badly under the current system, as this would, in its eyes, undermine the impartiality of the legal system.
While Libertarian thought is ideologically meritocratic, in practice their absolute adherence to respecting the rights of the status quo mean that they are really defenders of the social hierarchy; the same social hierarchy supported by traditional conservatism. In theory, traditional conservatism is about creating a culture that unfairly protects its interests through a patriarchal system, while Libertarianism is about getting rid of such artificial constructs that prevent a level playing field. In practice, their absolute adherence to the respect of property rights and free choice means that even under any meaningful changes to the system (say, for instance, the abolition of beneficial subsidies), those at the top of the hierarchy would be guaranteed an in-built advantage.

One example would suffice. The existence of private schools gives an in-built advantage to the richest in society to get the highest quality education for their children. While I'm not here to argue exactly one way or the other (although the author has made his view clear before), it's clear that this could never be called a "level playing field" in children's education. On this subject, Ayn Rand was always consistent in being in favour of the right to private schooling as being a) a matter of parental choice, and b) that private education is no guarantee of a child's intelligence or success, so is therefore "fair".
It is easy to point out that while this may be, technically, true, in practice having a private education gives even the most dim-witted child an in-built advantage over any more intelligent, but impoverished, peer. In short, being born into a wealthy family is like playing a computer game called life in the "easy" setting.

As Libertarians are the strongest advocates of not wanting to tell people how to live their lives or what people should do with their money, this allows traditional conservatives a lot of slack, at least on the second point (if not the first).
Social policy is one area of contention between Libertarians and traditionalists (as any momentary look at how David Cameron's ideas on social policy compare to Theresa May's will tell you). But this is a minor issue when looking at the overlap that they share on their mutual economic interests: they both want to get rich and stay rich. And Libertarians showed the traditionally Conservative establishment how it could get even richer.


A marriage of convenience

For the last thirty-five years, Libertarian ideology on both sides of the pond has created a boon for the richest in society, while on the other hand (especially since the financial crisis) created a period of unprecedented uncertainty and hardship for those at the wrong end. The marriage of interests between (Libertarian-supporting) big business and the (traditionally conservative) establishment was thus based on a trade-off: the Libertarian right made the establishment even richer and more empowered, while the establishment turned a blind eye to liberalizing some areas of social and economic policy.
Issues like gay marriage and the relaxing of drug laws caused traditionalists to make a fuss, but these are cosmetic changes that simply reflect social reality. Meanwhile, the state's real changes to society - such as how the establishment now has unparalleled access to an individual's privacy -go unchecked. This may be another part of "marriage of convenience". Traditionalists turn a blind eye to social policy, but gain powers over other issues like state surveillance; Libertarians gain on social policy, but "lose" on issues like state surveillance. Then again, both traditionalists and Libertarians can also see the longer-term benefit to both these policies to their shared agenda: relaxing social policy feeds the illusion that government has become more "liberal", which masks the fact that it has become much more intrusive in other ways. Meanwhile, the gap between the richest and the poorest grows to their mutual advantage.

In this sense, "Conservatism" has always been a tent of varying interests and (sometimes conflicting) ideas. The Libertarians of today share more in common ideologically with the Whigs of yesteryear in the UK and the USA. The politics of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon seem unlikely bedfellows to people like the TEA Party and Evangelical Christians, but their differences seem to have been (temporarily) overcome in the pursuit of power and mutual self-interest. Across in the UK, the same is true with the most zealous supporters of "Hard Brexit": many of them are ardent Libertarians, while others follow an agenda that seems to pursue an nostalgic form of neo-colonialism and nativism. Like the conflict between Bolsheviks and Liberals in 1917 Russia, or the Nazis and the Communists in 1932 Germany, they all see opportunities in the chaos.

While having very separate visions of their own, Fascists and Libertarians are extremists that thrive on seeing opportunism in social collapse. As said earlier, Libertarianism only found a receptive audience in the mainstream right in the 1970s due to specific economic factors; prior to then, it was the obsession of fringe movements and think tanks. And now, in the economic malaise that has struck segments of society since the financial crisis, we have seen Brexit in the UK and Donald Trump in the USA marrying elements of both Libertarian and Fascist thought into an idiosyncratic melange.
Like with traditional conservatism and Libertarianism, the natural links between the latter and Fascism seem tenuous. More seems to contradict them that unite them. But the same could have been said of traditional conservatives in the 1920s in Italy, and those in the 1930s in Germany: they both united behind Fascists due to their mutual self-interest.
Looking at the Fascist thinking of Julius Evola in particular (especially as he has allegedly been a subject of fascination to Steve Bannon), in spite of their many differences, there are still a number shared aspects of thought between the Libertarianism of Ayn Rand and the Fascism of Julius Evola. These include:

• A hierarchical, Social Darwinian, view of society. Julius Evola's Fascism was one that human society progressed through the strong over the weak, where the poor were seen as the lowest "caste" of society. In this light, democracy was the immoral antithesis to this "natural" order of things, as it gave power to the weak (i.e. the uneducated masses) over the strong (the educated elite). Libertarians are likewise "social Darwinists" at heart, and oppose altruism and government involvement in society; they believe that humans can only progress through self-advancement, and that the poor are therefore to blame for their own circumstances. Rand seemed to have a similarly skeptical - even hostile - view of modern "social democracies", seeing them as being a vehicle of altruistic indulgence, and thus against the rights of the individual and morality of society as a whole. While Rand was a critic of dictatorship as a rule, it is also implied in Libertarian thought that if government exists only to defend the property rights of the rich against the poor, it is also in favour of the elite against the masses. Thus, by definition, Rand was an elitist like Evola, albeit in a different manner. The manner of the method they were advocating may have been different, but the result is essentially the same.
• Ardent anti-Communism. Although Rand was an atheist and an arch Capitalist, and Evola was a neo-pagan and against "materialistic" ideologies like Capitalism and Communism, they both saw Communism as the worst threat to society. Would Rand ever have worked with a Fascist to destroy Communism? Probably not directly, but many of her later acolytes certainly did, especially in places like South and Central America (e.g. Pinochet in Chile, the Contras in Nicaragua). The Cold War saw Libertarians and repressive "neo-Fascist" dictatorships work together to prevent what they saw as "Communism", regardless of what that meant for ethics or the rule of law. And these days, this fear of "Communism" has evolved to an unspoken understanding that seems to operate between these two groups in their battle against "Socialism" in all its forms, regardless of how moderate, from the welfare state to equal rights. In the modern USA, many Republicans acquiesce to the unstable behaviour of Donald Trump out of fear of losing control of Capitol Hill, while in Britain, moderate Conservatives are silenced by extreme Brexiteers, out of fear of the "Socialist" agenda of Jeremy Corbyn.
•  Use of violence and oppression to achieve their aims. While Rand saw war as against humanity's self-interest, and Evola was a strong advocate of violence as a means to an end (as well as a natural result of Social Darwinism), both ideologies would be unattainable without violence and oppression being some part of the equation. Both these extreme ideologies can only be achieved in times of social and economic upheaval. Whereas Fascism sees violence as a necessary means to achieve its objective, and Libertarians do not, a Libertarian society (like a Communist society) would only be possible after the previous social structure collapsed, or became discredited. Like with the advocates of "Hard Brexit" in the UK, by implication their objective could only be reached after the previous order had disintegrated completely. Thus, for a Libertarian to achieve his goal, he must be indifferent to the necessary social disorder and chaos as a "means to an end", which puts him in the same moral plane as a Fascist. It is only a question of the means of the chaos. Lastly, a Libertarian's love of "freedom" only extends as far as his ideology is unchallenged; when challenged, a Libertarian will abuse their position of power like any tyrant, twisting the law and corruptly using the state apparatus to achieve their goal, while dishonestly claiming that their opponents threaten "stability" in the same manner.

Put in this light, Libertarians and Fascists could be argued to operate in much the same moral plane, as well as much the same ideological universe; the only difference is how they seek to get there.

Brexit: The Ultimate Blunder? How this is Theresa May's "Poll Tax"

The excellent book "The Blunders Of Our Governments" goes into great depth at how governments get things wrong, often with catastrophic results. The scale of the catastrophe just depends on the scale of the blunder.

One of the biggest (and most famous) "blunders" by any UK government in modern times was the Poll Tax. Looking at the sheer incompetence of how the government is managing its Brexit strategy, it's hard not to to draw parallels with how the Thatcher government blundered into a crisis entirely of its own making, and the current one. Some of the time scale over the issues - how it was a "slow burner" that gradually gained more and more inescapable momentum - also matches. To see how well the events of thirty years ago and today mirror each other, we'll have a look at the basics of what went wrong with the Poll Tax.

The idea of the Poll tax had its formation in the 1970s, thanks to think tanks that looked at "outside-of-the-box" solutions (mirroring what we see today with the government's Brexit strategy). The idea was one of a number of options at reforming "the rates", where council tax was paid only by those who owned property in the area. By early 1985, after the government had began its privatisation agenda, it looked in more detail at reforming local government and the system of "the rates", to make it equitable, so that everyone paid what was fair. In a famous meeting at Chequers, the Poll Tax was one of a few options put to the government, but by a series of interactions, some high-placed people in government saw the Poll Tax as the only true way to fully reform the system; all the other options seemed either unfair or meaningless half-measures. After a period of time, further discussions and discreet lobbying (also - looking at the practicality of the idea - from some in the civil service), it was in the end agreed that the only way for it to work was for a "big bang" implementation. In other words, having some kind of "transitional" arrangement was pointless and administratively confusing; much better to go straight from one system to the next, and iron out any potential glitches along the way. Those in government against all this (and there were a number of them) were silenced by the momentum that gradually built in favour of this radical reform; they were also quick to make their opposition well-known to others in government, to avoid any guilt by association.
Thus the Poll Tax was introduced through a combination of groupthink in government, as well as cultural disconnect. The problems (and the riots) are well-known. It now clear that the selfsame mistakes have took place with Brexit thirty years later, but now on a scale (and potential impact) many times greater.

Like with the Poll Tax, Brexit was a "slow-burner". Initially it was an issue with a small faction of the Conservative Party, some media hacks, editors and the like. But all these people had influence (and with that, gravitas) as well as money to back them up. Like with the Poll Tax, Brexit became an issue thanks to political events: where the Poll Tax came to be seen by Thatcher as a way to reform troublesome local councils, Brexit (or, at least, the initial offer of a referendum) came to be seen as way by Cameron to silence the hard-right in the party that were more ideological kin to UKIP. It took around five years (from the Chequers meeting in 1985 to it being implemented in 1990) for the Poll Tax to fully burst into life, warts and all. Brexit - if we call March 2019 its "implementation" - will have come to exist in the public sphere for a similar period, when the EU referendum was first promised by Cameron in early 2013. Like how the Poll Tax was ambushed on the rest of government, who were then hostages to its fate, Brexit made the same of Cameron, when the referendum made Brexit a reality. His successor, Theresa May, was then even more beholden to the hard-right ideologues in the party, even though she was not a fervent believer in the idea herself. As mentioned earlier with the Poll Tax, it was the desire for a "big bang", as well as the desire to make a radical reform, that led to the chaos of its implementation; the desire among some in government for a "Hard Brexit" without a transitional arrangement follows the same blinkered thinking that dismisses compromises such as staying in the EEA or EFTA as a "betrayal" of the cause. This stubbornness leaves the potential for heaven knows what kind of chaos to the UK economy come March 2019.

Once May succeeded Cameron as Prime Minister, Brexit took on a whole life of its own, like the Poll Tax did with the Thatcher government thirty years ago. Those who opposed the Poll Tax were seen as "wets" or lacking the boldness necessary for real reform; those now opposed to "Hard Brexit" are these days seen as "Remoaners" or saboteurs who are trying to undermine the government. This is the result of groupthink and cultural disconnect, as well as a deferential respect for those in authority, assuming that they must know what they are talking about . If anything, these issues are far worse this time around, given how high the stakes are. With the Poll Tax, those affected could (and many did) ignore their threatening letters from councils, which resulted in an eventual (partial) climb-down from the government; by contrast, the economy of the entire country is at stake thanks to the current "blunder", and the only way to escape it would be to flee abroad.

The Thatcher government had almost a "revolutionary" aura about it at times. Cameron's and May's government have been in some ways even more radical, and not in a good way. The desire for "reform" among the hard-right in government led to various ministers leading their departments as their own pet project. In a sense, Cameron's relaxed attitude to ministers pursuing their own agendas also led to scandal and scandal: the direct result of having an "experimental" government agenda.
This is what marks out the Conservative government of today as being different from earlier incarnations: whereas earlier governments took risks from time to time, the current government seem to actively encourage them. If you are not a risk-taker, it seems, then you lack the drive and radicalism necessary for the government's wider agenda. This kind of callous recklessness and shallow disregard for the wider consequences is unprecedented in any British government of modern times: it's almost as if they want things to fail. While some of it is down to the glaring incompetence of ministers, some of it can only be driven by the agenda of an amoral, manipulative few.

Thatcher's Poll Tax ultimately was a sign of the government losing the plot; it was only a change of Prime Minister, and a little luck, that allowed the Conservatives to stay in power for seven more years from its initial implementation disaster. A "Hard Brexit" would be a disaster on a scale a thousand times more disruptive; who knows what the political ramifications of that would be?

Legatum, Brexit, and the privatisation of the British government

It's common knowledge that "think tanks" play a part in forming government policy, but how large a part wasn't clear until recently.

There was a time when "think tanks" were seen as a useful method of exploring ideas and "out of the box" thinking. This was when they were still in their relative infancy (such as forty or fifty years ago), and their influence was slight. As they were, by their nature, peripheral bodies, they could easily be ignored. Think tanks were a "safe space" to explore unconventional ideas, where they would do no harm if they were shown to be mistaken. The lessons that were learned were learned in private and behind closed doors.
It could be said this changed when one think tank in particular, the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), began to seriously influence the thinking of the Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher. Its thinking then went on guide large areas of her government's policy. It was not that the IEA controlled government policy, but Thatcher's thinking and its thinking overlapped to a large degree. The problem was that these ideas became self-reinforcing, and this thinking also led to massive structural change of Britain. Some of its "Libertarian" ideas were put into practice on the British population, in the form of deregulating and privatising large sections of the economy, as well as guiding some changes to social policy.

As "think tanks" are essentially used as vehicles of political agendas, its important to recognise that these institutions are, almost by definition, working to undermine the democratic process. At the very least, we can say that "think tanks" act to manipulate the political process in a way that in opaque and beyond the public eye. Whereas at one time they were seen as useful "intellectual laboratories" for political nerds, these days they have turned into an industry in their own right, thanks to the support of wealthy donors.
Where the likes of the IEA began, others have followed over the years. There is now a plethora of "think tanks" that seem to have some form of influence on the Conservative Party and its government; perhaps the most influential, thanks to Brexit, is the Legatum Institute.

An excellent analysis of this "think tank" looks into the people involved, their backgrounds, and their motivations. The government seems to have given this "think tank" the role of doing large areas of the government's thinking on Brexit for it. In large areas of policy regarding Brexit, the government seems to have deferred judgement to the Legatum Institute. In a sense, we can call this the "privatisation of government": in this case, it is government policy itself that looks to have been privatised.


A logical conclusion?

This is a logical conclusion of the "Libertarian" school of thinking that came from Thatcherism. After privatising industries and services, it then led to the selling-off of government services themselves. The IEA had a large influence behind the scenes as it mirrored Thatcher's own thinking, thus reinforcing her own prejudices. By the time David Cameron came to power, there was a "second wind" of Libertarian thinking: under the auspices of the austerity program, there were further roll-outs of contracts for government services to the private sector.
Here we see how any event is used as an excuse to further advance the Libertarian agenda. Back in the '70s, it was used as the answer to the economic problems of the times. By the '80s, they had successfully changed the structure of the economy through deregulation, which ultimately led to the financial crisis of 2008; the answer to this (self-inflicted) problem was even more of the same agenda, now under the excuse of "austerity".
The "Brexit Agenda" was yet another furthering of the same cause: by freeing Britain of the "shackles" of the EU, it would solve the problem of "austerity". All the money that was wasted on the EU could be re-channeled to Britain. The use of the "Brexit Agenda" to dominate the political narrative was even more brazen than its earlier Libertarian incarnations, as it came about through the use of an outside force (UKIP) that didn't even have any serious representation in parliament. In earlier times, events were used as an excuse to further their agenda; nowadays, the events themselves are brazenly manipulated to further their agenda, regardless of how this demeans the democratic process. Brexit didn't come about through a "popular uprising", but through the insidious seeping of an agenda into the political mainstream.

The Legatum Institute fits into this "agenda" neatly, as it espouses the same aim using the same fallacies: that the EU was the cause of Britain's problems, and deregulation from the EU's constraints would allow Britain to thrive. Of course, this narrative all suits the agenda of those espousing the narrative: the agenda, as some of its advocates have argued, is to turn Britain into an economy like Singapore's.

The situation we are at is where the agenda that serves a narrow segment of society also serves to "privatize" government itself: with the ultimate aim being where the private sector can effectively make government policy, beyond the public eye and without proper transparency. While this idea is nothing new, as "lobbying" has been a part of politics for an eternity, its logical conclusion is the "Brexit Agenda": where the private sector runs the government, in the manner of a hierarchical company where Britain's citizens are its "worker bees".

Where a properly-functional democracy is meant to fit into this, is unclear.

The Conservatives' economic plan: how to destroy British society in a few easy steps

As many people have noticed, the Tories' economic plan isn't really working. Well, there's a "recovery" of sorts, but it's the weakest so-called "recovery" known in living memory, including the Depression.

The recovery centres on several economic factors (more about them here).
First of all, there is a dysfunctional jobs market, meaning that there is a dearth of skilled work. The result is that skilled workers are having to settle for low-skilled (or non-skilled) work in areas like retail and the service sector, meaning that in order to get a job at Aldi, school-leavers are competing with graduates and European migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. This naturally gives more leverage to employers, meaning they can cut overheads on wages and workers' benefits, explaining the explosion in "zero hours" contracts. Oh, employers now love the Conservatives for this, I'm sure...as they have now created a workers' version of living hell.

You don't have to be out-of-work to live in poverty - most people in poverty (and receiving most of the benefits!) -  are those already in employment. So most of the so-called "scroungers" on benefits are in fact the selfsame "hard-working" people that the Conservatives claim to be fighting for. Instead, the Tories are kicking them while they're already down. So what, then, is the point of being in work for these despairing, blighted souls?

Apart from that, the other main factor driving the "recovery" is uncontrolled inflation in property prices - sorry, I mean the "boost" in house prices - which George Osborne was famously quoted as helping "Middle England" feel a little bit richer nearer the election.(At this point, the intention to "make people feel richer" should be emphasized. The chancellor's scheme is another of his many machiavellian plans to deceive while sneering at those worse-off than him)  Osborne fueled this further by creating a government subsidy that effectively funds selectively-targeted, state-sponsored inflation, known as "help to buy". The recurring theme here is a tendency to deal with the problem by making it worse.

Are they psychos, or just plain stupid?

"Dealing with the problem by making it worse" is something you either do by intention or by lack of foresight. And if you keep on doing this again and again, you can logically only reach one conclusion: either you are doing this on purpose, or you're doing it because you haven't got a brain. This has been the ongoing scenario that successive Conservative (and Labour) governments have overseen for the past thirty-five years.

The current Conservative government is wedded to the "paying off the debt" through a course of austerity. As Cameron is keen to say, they are fulfilling their promise to put Britain's finances in order.
Except, they aren't: the deficit is getting worse, not better. Year-on-year, George Osborne is missing his targets by a mile, and meanwhile, the economic circumstances of everyday people are getting worse, as they are stuck in low-pay jobs, rising household debt they are funding through easy credit. Debt is rising, and the Tories must at least privately) understand that their economic plan was always intellectually-bankrupt.

The Tories' telling of the financial crisis was a novel explanation of events, that conveniently re-spun the argument to suit their own psychology. In their eyes, the financial crisis was primarily a result of a) government overspending on welfare, and b) not much else, really. Stood up against the hard truth of economics, the reason that the Labour government went into financial free-fall was in large part a result of rapidly-falling tax revenues as a consequence of the global crisis creating a slump. This is the same thing that the current government are suffering now.
There was also the massive injection of the bailout to prop up the broken banking system, but let's not get into that massive issue here (where the Tories don't have a moral leg to stand on).

In spite of this, in spite of being shown that their plan isn't working but in fact making public finances worse, and that they are destroying the labour market, and creating yet another speculative housing bubble potentially worse than the last one, George Osborne insists on cutting public spending much further after the election.
Is this man actually sane? Given the circumstances, it is hard not to question the "rationalism" of some of the decision-making happening in Whitehall.

An "institutionalised" establishment?

The decision-making process of Cameron, Osborne, and the many other "establishment" progeny running the government is worth thinking about. The "establishment" is a master at one thing: self-preservation.
As one of the long-living elites in the developed world, Britain's ruling elite has for centuries perfected a private education system (which they quaintly call "public school" - clever, that!) which churns out generation after generation of young men who have the skills necessary to run the country in the way it has been run for generations: by drumming in to them strict ideological orthodoxy, good manners, and a wily tongue. It is this combination of characteristics that has kept the establishment where it is, in spite of the many revolutions and upheavals across the rest of Europe over the centuries. The key for Britain's elite is to be one step ahead of the game, otherwise the whole stack of cards come crashing down - as they did in France in 1789, and Russia in 1917.

The establishment of the welfare state after the Second World War was a severe test to the establishment, forcing it on the back foot. The "One Nation" Toryism of Harold MacMillan was the establishment's compromise, which held things at bay for some time. The inflationary crises of the 1970s - a result of a consumer boom and unprecedented oil price rises, and NOT due to unreasonable demands from the trades unions - forced a re-think. People like Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher were advocates for a completely new economic model.

Ever since then, Thatcherism has been the economic orthodoxy of the government, including Labour. The establishment thus found a new orthodoxy that they found fit neatly into their own self-preservation. Greed was now good, and there was no longer such a thing as "society" (so we no longer had to care about the "social good"). Inequality was to be celebrated by Tories as a sign of the "natural order". In other words, it was as though feudalism had never gone out of fashion.

The new orthodoxy had several major effects: the gap between rich and poor skyrocketed; council houses were sold off, and the remaining council estate effectively became dumping grounds for the poor and "socially disadvantaged" who could afford nothing else (thus the "sink estate" was born, and the Tories neatly created a new scapegoat for society's ills); the economy was "redesigned" by Thatcherites so that industrial towns became unemployment and low-skill hotspots; and successive housing bubbles were created, making people "feel rich".

The "establishment" is not evil in itself, but by its very nature, it is designed to house, incubate and protect individuals who commit evil, thus perpetuating the problem. It is no wonder that the child abuse scandal rocking the UK in recent times uncovers more horrific revelations with each passing month.
It may be safe so assume that when the horrific truth comes out, the perpetrators will be long dead, thus protecting the integrity of those who hid the truth in the name of "self-preservation"...

Why UKIP are the "real" Conservative Party

There are two conservative parties in British national politics today: the Conservative Party, and UKIP. One of them represents the views of the Thatcherite, Euro-sceptic, neo-liberal right, and the other is the "Conservative Party".

Nigel Farage is the leader of UKIP, and was one of its first members, joining in the early nineties after leaving the Conservative Party in disgust over the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which turned the EU from a looser, free trade zone into a much more concrete political and legal institution, with the aim of perpetual "ever closer union".

"We'll always have Maastricht"

It's worth remembering that Margaret Thatcher was always of the view that the old EEC was good for Britain because it was a free trade zone; she supported it because it was in Britain's interests. She was pro-European in many ways; but she was also ideologically anti-EU, as it took away sovereignty from Britain over various areas of government.
The crunch came in 1989 when her chancellor and foreign secretary (Nigel Lawson and Geoffrey Howe) had pressured Thatcher into agreeing to join the ERM, thus harmonising the comparative values of various European currencies, including the pound. Over this key issue, amongst others, Thatcher fired Howe that summer, replacing him with the little-known (harmless? malleable?) John Major. Barely a few months later, and in October Lawson quit, forcing Thatcher to promote the hitherto unknown Major into the second biggest job in the government, that of chancellor. And little over a year later, in November 1990, Thatcher herself was gone. It was surely the most tempestuous eighteen months of British peacetime politics ever known in the modern Conservative Party. And Europe had played a key part of it.

Major came to power by accident and chance circumstance; an archetypal mediocrity, in every way like the fictitious Jim Hacker from the political satire series, "Yes (Prime) Minister".
Thatcher seemed to trust him as a safe bet in 1989, seemingly channelling her own prejudices into the empty jar that was John Major; assuming he was another of the younger generation of "Thatcher clones", raised to worship at Thatcher's altar, and had already replaced many of the older "wets". But once in power under his own steam, it was clear to the Thatcherites that Major was just like the old-style "wets".
His support for the Maastricht Treaty caused a significant number of Conservatives to rebel, coming close to forcing a vote of confidence that could have brought down the government itself. The rest of the story is well-known.

The heir to Thatcher?

Reviewing this period of Conservative history is key to understanding UKIP. Because Nigel Farage's politics and ideology are shaped by those events, and by the ideology of Thatcher. While the modern leaders of the Conservatives claim to be "neo-Thatcherites", they know the words but not the real psychology; Cameron and Osborne are too distanced from that time and Thatcher's unique sense of mission. Besides, Cameron claimed he was the "heir to Blair" before saying he was heir to anyone else; in this sense, the Conservative Party are simply an extension of Cameron's psychology and ideology (whatever that is), and "Thatcherism" is only a superficial part of it.

It was Thatcher who transformed the Conservative Party into a fearsome electoral machine under her tutelage; it was Thatcher who comfortably won three elections in a row. UKIP are criticised as a "populist" party, but it is Thatcher who is the real role model to follow in creating a "populist" political party: Thatcher was herself an outsider, a non-establishment figure - a grocer's daughter from Lincolnshire who was a convert to the neoliberalism expounded by Ayn Rand.
With her own force of will she became leader of the Conservative Party, and turned it into a neo-liberal party, forcing it to reject the "post-war consensus". Likewise, she also made the Conservative Party seem a less "establishment" party, and appeal again to ordinary people; the aspiring working classes. Norman Tebbitt is a witness to that.

It was this approach that made Thatcher the most successful Prime Minister of the modern age - a non-establishment, egalitarian political outfit that believes in promoting self-worth and economic freedom. Now, Thatcher was a divisive figure - there can be no denying that - and that was as much down to her difficult (detached?) personality as much as her view on society. What Farage has in his favour is a genuine and irrepressible personality that explains ideas in ways people can simply understand.

It is Nigel Farage who has the best claim today to be a real "heir to Thatcher". Farage made his career in the "Thatcher Eighties" in the London Metals Exchange, and doing so without even going to university. His views are those that Thatcher espoused thirty years ago, almost without exception.

What UKIP and Farage represent is, put simply, the politics of Thatcher and the Conservative Party circa 1987. There are many in the Conservative Party who look to the events of 1989-90 as a black time, when the real principles of Conservatism were betrayed and the politics of Thatcher (and the woman herself) were abandoned. The Conservatives have never truly recovered from that.

Farage and UKIP are, in many ways, an opportunity to put things back in some order. Of the Maastricht rebels and the Eurosceptics of the '90s, few are still around or in active politics. A glorius exception to that is John Redwood, who famously put up a leadership challenge to Major in 1995. The question to ask is: with two MPs already having gone to UKIP, why should others not follow? Clearly, those who admire the politics of Thatcher have more in common with UKIP than with the modern Conservative Party. Cameron's views on Europe are little different from those that John major held twenty years ago, and by being part of UKIP those Conservative MPs can at least not worry about having to toe a "party line" clearly so far from their own heart. Under Cameron, the Conservative Party has lost all real sense of purpose beyond its own, aimless, survival.

They should join a "real" Conservative Party...

Margaret Thatcher's long legacy: Part One

The hugely-contrasting reactions to Margaret Thatcher's death tell us so much about the all-too-real legacy that her eleven-and-a-half year premiership has left on the UK. It is difficult to imagine any other PM's death provoking the same joyous reactions in some parts of the country (and some on the political left), as though Thatcher were comparable with a hated dictator.

The fact is that a person's view of Thatcher, and whether they mourned or cheered her death, depends largely on where they are from in the UK; and that tells you what kind of a person Margaret Thatcher was.

Thatcher's was the first female Prime Minister, as well as being one of its longest-serving, winning three elections in a row; she left the UK overall a much richer place than where it was when she began office; she completely changed the way that the UK was ran as a country, as well as its economy; she "won" the Falklands War, and contributed to the end of the Cold War. These points are considered her main achievements by her supporters, though they all paper over the truth: the mess that Britain is in today is also Thatcher's longest legacy of all.

And all of her so-called "achievements" gloss over many ugly truths.

Margaret Thatcher may have been Britain's first female Prime Minister, but she was no "feminist". Yes, by being a woman, in itself this provided a role model for women to aspire to, but she never made a huge point of trying to actively promote equal rights for women in the workplace, or help the lot of stay-at-home mums, beyond standardised political slogans. If anything, her style of running government shows even a distrust towards her own gender, as there were hardly any female ministers in her government; as though she preferred to have no others competing for control of the men under her thumb in government. There are endless anecdotes about her "masculine" and domineering style of government, and how she only emphasized her sexuality when it seemed useful; in every other way, she was a very "unwomanly" kind of female, getting to where she did not because of her gender, but in spite of it. In that way, she may have seen her female identity as something to be borne and mostly brushed under the carpet, only to be spoken of when it was deemed necessary.

Looking at her politics, she was far more of an "individualist" than a "feminist". It seems she thought of herself as an individual above anything else; being female was just a detail. She read Hayek in her formative years, and became an admirer of Ayn Rand's school of thought. In that way, and in her consistent belief in libertarianism, she was a radical compared with her political contemporaries, espousing views on individualism that would have seemed "un-British" to many. This is what made Thatcher unique in Britain; and it was the force of her personality that made her "libertarian revolution" by the ballot box possible. Over in the USA, Reagan followed a similar path, but Thatcher's clarity of thought was more evident: in that way, Thatcher was a "British Ayn Rand", elected to power.

Thatcher's achievement as PM for more than eleven years is a testament to her skills as a politician, but it also should not be forgotten how she stayed in power. In Thatcher's first term in office, she very little that was obviously "revolutionary". She abolished exchange controls (allowing the free movement of money out of the country), and her government's approach to the economy was all about reducing inflation through government cutbacks (where Cameron's current government get their inspiration), which made the economy slide into a deep recession for most Thatcher's first few years in office. Britain in the early eighties was as grim as at any time in the seventies, mostly due to Thatcher's policies, leading her to have to fight to keep her job as leader of her own party against the Conservative "wets", who wanted a more flexible approach to running the economy. This was where her famous phrase "The Lady's Not For Turning" came from.

Thatcher's cutbacks also included the armed forces, leading to choices that meant a reduction in the navy's capabilities in the South Atlantic. The military junta of Argentina then took this as a green light to invade the Falkland Islands.
The Falklands War is seen as one of Thatcher's most glorious moments, but the reality of her conduct paints a very different picture. Apart from her government's naval cutbacks being partially responsible for leaving an open goal for the Argentinian military, Thatcher wavered as what the right reaction would be, even considering bribing the islanders to stay under Argentinian control (although she made public statements suggesting the opposite). Finally, when she decided as PM it would be electoral suicide not to try to reclaim the islands, and looked at a military solution, she was told Britain did not even have enough aircraft support for such a long-distance operation. Regardless of this, Thatcher's mind seemed made up on the war, and her government sent troops to the Falklands, not knowing if they had enough aircraft to protect their own troops.

The sinking of the General Belgrano was the most controversial moment of the war; by this point of the war, Thatcher's decision-making process was very quick, and it is during the Falklands War that Thatcher seems to have become famous for her sharp decisions, not wanting to linger on the detail like some of her contemporaries. It was this "quick decision" by Thatcher over the General Belgrano that resulted in the Argeninians returning in kind, sinking the HMS Sheffield shortly afterwards. Although there were legitimate military reasons for targeting the General Belgrano, the problem for Thatcher was that the ship was moving away from the zone of conflict and outside of Britain's own self-declared "exclusion zone" around the Falkland Islands. This made the sinking look opportunistic, and a ruthless execution of military power to display intent. In this, it certainly had the effect intended, as the Argentinian navy returned to port. In another sense though, for many British people who heard of the circumstances behind the sinking, it seemed an "un-British" way to behave - breaking your own rules and shooting someone in the back. But it also has the political effect of bolstering Thatcher's "strong" image even further.

In the event, the Falklands War was won through pure luck and determination by the troops themselves. The lack of British aircraft effectively doomed more than two hundred soldiers to their deaths, as ships were at times defenceless against Argentinian air attacks. At the crucial landing zone for the troops, it was pure luck that meant that their ships were not all sunk; if a few more Argentinian bombs had been successful, the Falklands War would probably have gone down as one of Britain's greatest military blunders and disasters.
It is for this reason why Thatcher's admiration from those who praise her conduct in the Falklands seems cruelly misplaced.
Apart from deciding to send soldiers to war without proper air support, it is difficult to say how Thatcher made a significant contribution to the success or failure of that conflict. The fact that she was then able to use her military conduct as a tool for re-election, is even more sickening.

The Falklands War also coincided with the economy finally showing signs of improvement, which allowed her to win a second term in office, and begin her "revolution" in earnest. And it is Thatcher's "revolution" that is her real legacy.

Margaret And The Monetarists: The 1970s, and How To Destroy A Decade

The 1970s as a decade has become forever associated with economic stagnation ("stagflation") and unruly unions. It is this association, continually repeated, that helped the Conservatives stay in power for eighteen years; and it is the almost faith-like acceptance of this perception by the likes of Tony Blair that has helped to  maintain the same economic system that led to the financial crisis in 2008.

Is this perception accurate? When we look at the evidence, the picture tells us a very different, and much more complex picture. What is most important to remember is in whose interests is it that the commonly-accepted perception of "The Seventies" not be questioned. 

The 1970s was not a decade of continual decline and paralysis by the unions. There were two real bouts of crisis, true, but there were various factors for these, which I'll go into later.
It is true that in general the UK had been in overall decline since the end of the Second World War, and that by the start of the 1970s the industries that had supported the economy during the British Empire - trade through manufactured exports, coal production and shipbuilding - were declining by worrying levels due to cheaper and more productive competitors abroad. Put simply, Britain was no longer as useful to the rest of the world now that it no longer had an Empire that depended on it.
But the position was not totally hopeless, and the leading politicians of the day still believed that the "post-war consensus" (i.e. following a basically Keynesian-style of economics) was the best formula. Both leaders of the two main parties, Wilson and Heath, believed in some form of government-led action to maintain the economic health of the country.

Things only really started getting ugly after the Yom Kippur War in late 1973. Before that, the British economy was generally doing fine. There had been the scare of the Miners' strike in early 1972, where Arthur Scargill became a household name through his action at the Saltley picket and had forced the government to make concessions, but this was more of a blip in Heath's first few years as PM. The first few years of The Seventies were not too bad economically. House prices were going up, but that was due to the trend to buy property that was fast catching on (and a clear indicator of perceived wealth). The Heath government had brought the UK into the (then) EEC.
In other ways, the Heath government had some very progressive ideas from both the left and right. There was the (very Keynesian) idea to build a new airport on the Essex coast (Maplin Sands), which was to be the impetus for an adjecent new city like Milton Keynes; therefore promoting growth through massive investment projects. On the other hand, there were some progressive right-wing ideas around reforming (i.e. privatising) how public services were ran, though the ideas were cautiously-envisaged compared to Thatcher's later reforms.

It was the Oil Shock after the Yom Kippur War, that was felt all across the West, that sent the economy into a death-dive. And this is the important thing to remember: every country in the West was affected badly by the Oil Shock. Then the miners' union, the NUM, had an idea: if the government can pay through the roof for oil, then why can they not do the same for Britain's coal? As a result of the government's stubbornness towards the NUM's demands, coal supplies quickly began to fall. So after the New Year of 1974, the government introduced the "three-day week", where power would only be supplied three days out of seven in order to conserve coal supplies. Shortly after, Edward Heath called a general election. The result was a hung parliament, when he tried to make some kind of agreement with the Liberals. He failed, and Harold Wilson returned as PM.

The experience of Edward Heath as Prime Minister had a schizophrenic effect on the Conservative party. Margaret Thatcher had been his Education Minister, but generally she was thought of as something of an aberration.
Unlike her contemporaries as Prime Minister, Heath, Wilson and Callaghan, Thatcher's politics as a young person had not been deeply affected by the Depression. These three one-time Prime Ministers were more-or-less Keynesians of one type or another because they had seen the desperate poverty the Depression had caused at first hand. Margaret Thatcher had not. She had grown up in Grantham, a provincial town in Lincolnshire, her father a family grocer who had made a comfortable success out of his life, and was a longstanding member of the council and mayor later on. She was able to take advantage of this stable background to get herself an education at Oxford, and met her rich future husband, Denis. From then on, her life in politics went from success to success. In short, Margaret Thatcher was a woman not familiar with failure.
Heath stood down after losing the election, and Thatcher put her name forward, though she was not expecting to win it herself. She was the kind recipient of the nebulous dealings of the Conservative party, however, and when she became the surprise choice for leader, her peers didn't give her much of a chance in the long-term.
One of these reasons was her personality, which did not seem very natural or humane. She appeared to struggle to relate to the public, and she had gained the notorious epithet "Milk-snatcher" while as Education Minister. Then there were the types of people she had become associated with.
The "Monetarists" was a term for economists and political thinkers who were attracted to the idea of freeing-up the economy from Keynesian "consensus", allowing "market forces" to run the economy and the government do much less in general . They had created a number of think-tanks where like-minded Conservatives and right-wing economists could discuss and plan a strategy for expanding their philosophy to a wider audience. But in 1974, these ideas seemed too outlandish for many Conservatives, let alone the wider public. Besides, they were theories, that had never been really put into practice.

The second Wilson government had to face the continued worsening of the economy from the after-effects of the Oil Shock. What was worse, neither Wilson, his peers, or even the civil service, had much of an idea about how to deal with it. Because something like the Oil Shock had never happened before in living memory (at least, not since the Depression), a collective torpor seemed to gather over government in general. Inflation and unemployment soared. This forced the then-chancellor Denis Healey began to take a more pragmatic line with the Keynesian "consensus" by cutting public spending from spring 1975 onwards, so that the economy began to pick up. However, a cut in interest rates in spring 1976 (by the Bank Of England or the Treasury, no-one seems quite sure) started a domino effect on the stock markets, causing a calamitous drop in the value of the pound. It was this crisis that prompted Wilson's resignation and Callaghan to take over.

The drop in the pound continued for months. A loan in the summer of 1976 from other rich countries helped to reverse the damage, but the loan needed to be paid back quickly, and this is where the infamous IMF loan came from. By the end of that horrible year, Britain had been made to look a laughing stock on the money markets, and great damage had been done to the economy. What was worse, this was all entirely avoidable if the Bank Of England and the Treasury had got its act together; worse, when explaining the scale of the problem to the IMF, they had exaggerated the damage. In the end, barely half of the IMF loan money was needed by the government, so a crisis had been created almost out of nothing, and Britain's reputation destroyed needlessly.
This, and the "three-day week" were the low points for Britain in The Seventies. Callaghan as PM turned out to much more like Heath than many in the Labour party would have liked to admit at the time. His approach to dealing with the state of the economy was very pragmatic. After the IMF loan debacle, Britain's economy began to improve once more, and union action had reduced significantly compared to the first half of the decade, and at a time when union membership was growing ever more.
It was Callaghan's approach to the unions that was his signature piece, and also, counter-intuitively, his downfall. Callaghan had wanted to make the British economy and working life much more like Germany, as he believed it was Britain's best approach to a more progressive society and sustainable economy. And in many ways, posterity has proven him right. His approach with the unions involved a compromise called the "social contract", whereby unions accepted pay rises lower than than inflation.

By the summer of 1978, with the economy still on the right track, there was gossip of an autumn election. The polls were close, indicating another hung parliament like in early 1974 (another election later on in '74 gave Labour a small majority, but this has been eroded to a minority by losing successive by-elections, so that Callaghan was in government by an informal pact in parliament with the Liberals). Like Gordon Brown in 2007, Callaghan weighed up the options and thought, with the economy on track to improve further, he should wait till the spring of 1979. This decision proved to be fatal.
The longstanding union leader, Jack Jones, was a virtual power-broker with the government. As a fellow supporter of Callaghan's compromise and "social contract", his retirement in 1978 coincided with Callaghan's bold (or arrogant) decision to restrict union pay increases even further than what had been previously agreed, which was also around the same time as the gossip surrounding an autumn election. The result was that Jones' successor took a much stronger line with the government. Once Callaghan had made the decision to opt for a spring '79 election, the dice had been rolled and it didn't take long for the opportunistic element of the unions to strike. The result was the "Winter Of Discontent", which saw the widest organised strike action seen since the 1920s.

The "Winter Of Discontent" was not really as fully organised as the General Strike in the 1920s; it was much more about mass opportunism by workers tired of a decade of wages kept below inflation, and those workers in unions around the country simply began following suit with everyone else. The "Winter Of Discontent" was less a strike than a spontaneous social uprising, unprecedented in modern British history. Since the crisis of the "three day week" of early 1974, unions had been relatively disciplined. But Callaghan's step to restrain wage increases further was the straw that broke the camel's back. In one sense it was as though the spirit of '74 had returned, but the crucial difference was the spontaneous and almost hysterical nature of the events of the winter of '78-'79. Although there were many who did not strike, the sheer random nature of how previously quiet unions (such as those representing grave-diggers, refuse collectors, traffic wardens and lorry drivers) suddenly became militant, was a shock to the establishment, the Labour government included. There was a period during that winter when Hull had become effectively a union-ran city, where employers had to queue like supplicants at the local union office to ask for permission to transport goods. For a number of weeks, it was like the "Paris Commune" had taken over Hull; Leningrad-on-the-Humber.

Such a "social revolution" was bound to terrify some parts of the establishment, and in such an emotive atmosphere, the reckoning was not long in coming. When the election finally came after the government lost a vote of confidence, Callaghan was punished and lost the election.
Thanks to a series of fortuitous events, Thatcher and "The Monetarists" had finally won their place in government.

It is one of politics' "what ifs". If Callaghan had gone for an autumn 1978 election, a hung parliament or small Labour majority was the most likely result. Thatcher would likely have been forced out by her party, and the more moderate "Heathite" side of the party would have likely been able to select a new leader. So "Thatcherism" and "Monetarism" may well have never had the chance to see the light of day at all. And a second term Callaghan, with the backing of the growing revenues from North Sea Oil, may have been able to make Britain's economy more sustainable like Germany's.

Instead, Thatcher was given the chance to implement her theories on the giant laboratory of Britain. But it did not happen right away; in fact Thatcher's first term in many ways resembled a sort of "Heath II": it was unsure of what to do, and her government gave in to a miners strike in early 1981 just like Heath in 1972. Often forgotten now, Thatcher's first term presided over a far worse economy and unemployment levels far worse than even in the 1970s; the economy stagnated for three years, not showing real signs of improvement until after the 1983 election. The Conservatives in the 1983 election didn't even do very well; what saved them was the civil war on the left that split the opposition vote three ways. That, and the "Falklands effect".
It was only after the '83 election that Thatcher felt confident enough to implement her "Monetarist" agenda.
The opening-up of the banking sector led to the free-for-all in the stock market and the practices that led to the financial crisis in the UK. What remained of British manufacturing and heavy industry (i.e. the key industries outside of the South Of England) was allowed to stagnate. Union power was crushed, at the expense of employees' rights. The "right to buy" council houses led to a massive shortfall in the number of affordable houses in the UK in the long term, and was a key factor that led to the dysfunctional housing market we now face. Public sector industries were sold off to the private sector; now we know the result of that in the ever-rising cost of our bills.

And all this because Margaret Thatcher and "The Monetarists" thought that The Seventies was a horrible time for Britain. In reality, the peak of British egalitarianism, where the gap between the rich and the poor was at its smallest, was in the later seventies, during Callaghan's government. The poor generally did well in the 1970s, in spite of inflation. So clearly there is something wrong with the "consensus" formed since that it was a time of economic hardship and poverty. It was not, for the vast majority. The people who "suffered" (in the technical sense) the most in the 1970s were the rich; in particular, the mega-rich, as they were forced to contribute more to the state in taxes, and saw the loss in value of their savings in real terms.

But do we want a more egalitarian and meritocratic society, or one that is designed to benefit those who are already rich?