It’s sign of how large Margaret Thatcher still looms in Scotland that of all the things Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar could disagree about, it’s Mrs Thatcher that does it. “She brought about meaningful change,” says Starmer. “She decimated Scotland,” says Sarwar. Guys, guys! Break it up. She’s not worth it.
So what did the two men say exactly? Writing in The Telegraph, Sir Keir said that Mrs Thatcher had tried to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism. He also said later that you can divide leaders into the ones with a plan and the ones that drift and Mrs Thatcher, he said, had a driving sense of purpose.
Mr Sarwar wasn’t having any of it. Mrs Thatcher, he said, decimated Scotland and he made it clear he didn’t think the former PM had a good legacy in any part of the UK. Sir Keir, he said, was emphasising Mrs Thatcher’s sense of purpose rather than what she actually did.
To be fair to Mr Sarwar, that’s a pretty fair reading of Sir Keir’s remarks but it also emphasises how weird they were. Leaders can have a sense of purpose and be driven, but if they’re also wrong on the fundamentals, the policies, the stuff they actually do, then a sense of purpose becomes a vice not a virtue. In my experience, it’s often the most misguided, ill-informed or incompetent people who are the most driven. The point is you need to have a sense of purpose and the right policies. You need both.
Sir Keir probably understands this perfectly well which is why he said what he did. For some reason he felt the need to praise something about Mrs Thatcher and her sense of purpose was all he could manage. Quite why he felt this need I do not understand: maybe he thinks some swithering Thatcher-loving voters will see him as a fellow Thatcher lover and vote Labour, but he isn’t and they won’t. So what’s the point?
Read more: The centre of Glasgow – we’re still not getting it are we?
Sir Keir and Mr Sarwar have missed the actual truth about Mrs Thatcher. Sir Keir says she brought about meaningful change without saying what the change was, while Mr Sarwar suggests she decimated Scotland. But the truth, as always, is more nuanced.
Did she decimate Scotland? Yes, parts of it. The reason there is such deep-seated poverty in large parts of Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and elsewhere is that many of the towns and villages there were detached from their only big source of employment when the coal mines shut down in the 1980s, and it’s one of the big failures of the Thatcher government that there was no kind of recovery plan.
But to talk about the communities that were damaged without also talking about the communities that thrived is misleading. I talked to one of Thatcher’s former ministers, Malcolm Rifkind, about this and he quite rightly talked about the success of right-to-buy, a policy he introduced as a junior minister. Remember, he said, what some of the big estates were like in the 70s: huge, monocultural places run with authoritarian zeal. But after right-to-buy, a lot of the estates were better and healthier than before. And people owned their houses in a country where the levels of home ownership were once lower than in Communist Hungary. It’s all good stuff.
Read more: XL Bully ban? The Scottish Government is right
Sir Malcolm also pointed out the other ways in which many Scots embraced Thatcherism. Privatisation and buying shares in privatised industries? The Scots queued up as much as the English. Reducing income tax? Just as popular in Scotland as down south. And even the grim consequences of the coal mines needs context. The decline in heavy industry was happening all over western Europe, not just in Scotland.
I’m guessing lots of Scots get this and can see that Mr Sarwar is being over the top when he says Mrs Thatcher decimated the whole country. Not true. As for Sir Keir, I wish he’d be less wishy-washy. If he hates Thatcherism, say hate. If he loves it, say love. And if he’s going to bring the subject up, he needs to tell us which of her policies he thinks worked, and which he thinks didn’t. Instead, he’s gone for the “sense of purpose” thing in an apparent attempt to woo those of us who admired Thatcher. But sorry, we are un-wooed. Try again.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel