Many who will vote in Britain's May 1 elections are too young too remember the dark days before Margret Thatcher's Tory
Revolution.
Britain in the late 60's and early 70's was a mess. Marxist miners had nearly brought the nation to its knees. London's lights
dimmed, as union thugs cut off power. Unemployment and taxes were sky high, deficits out of control. .
MI.5, Britain's security service, suspected Prime Minister Harold Wilson might be a KGB agent. There were rumors of coup
plots by MI.5, and Bolshevik unions. Britain was sick, demoralized, adrift.
Then, the daughter of a grocer - the profession most sneered at by British aristocrats - became Prime Minister and turned
Britain from the Sick Man of Europe into its healthiest nation. Eighteen years of Conservative rule gave Britain the lowest
unemployment, highest productivity, steadiest growth and most robust economy among major European nations. The Tories
even managed to avoid the Sargasso Sea of regulations, controls, and social taxes that causes Europe 12% chronic
unemployment and prices its goods out of world markets.
Poor John Major gets little credit for carrying the torch of Thatcher's free market revolution. Many British voters are fed up
looking at the lugubrious Major, a man of passionate blandness. He's also had the bad luck to caught up by two powerful,
converging tides: what the wise French call `fin du siacle,' and `fin du regime.'
`Fin du siacle' means end of the century, a time of malaise and deep uncertainty that engenders political instability, giddiness,
and bizarre behavior. `Fin du regime' is a condition of political exhaustion, when a ruling group has run out of ideas, energy
and raison d'etre. Such periods are characterized by scandals, intrigue and savage backbiting.
The Tories suffer from both in spades. British voters are no longer amused by deceased Tory MP's, clad only in fishnet
stockings; lords of the realm receiving enemas from transvestites in nurse's uniforms; or vicious, pubic bitchiness between
cabinet rivals.
Britain's tawdry royal soap opera also damaged the Tories. The pathetic antics of Britain's titled twits reminds ordinary
working people of the outrageously unfair class system that still oppresses the nation. In spite of its economic progress, Britain
remains one of Europe's most backward, ossified nations in terms of social mobility. Birth, education, accent and inherited
money, not merit, determine the ruling class. The upper class's vitriolic hatred of `wogs' -Jews, Muslims, Frenchmen, Germans
- still guides Britain's foreign policy.
Major's toffy cabinet ministers in their pinched Saville Row Suits, lisping languidly in accents Oxonian, reminds many Brits just
how rotten and irrelevant the old aristocracy has become. These jejune relics belong to the 19th century, not the 21st.
Polls suggest Tony Blair's Labour Party will win a landslide. Blair, a Clinton clone, moved Labor from far left to blurry center.
Like Clinton, he specializes in emoting fuzzy, squishy mood messages to female voters. The `new' Labour Party, vows
metagenic Blair, is firmly centrist: it will practice fiscal prudence with a social conscience.
This is blarney. The political bedrock of Labour - as Democrats in the US, or Canada's Liberals and NDP - is public and
industrial unions, bureaucrats, state-owned TV and radio, unemployed, pensioners, and the vast welfare system.
Those who live off public spending always back big government, high taxes and deficits. They are the party of government.
Blair must reward these core supporters by increasing social spending and anti-business regulations. Once having won the
election, Labour will be thus likely to shift back to the left. Labour's closets are still filled by unrepentant marxists. Loony
leftists infest the party at all levels.
Way ahead in the polls, Blair looks like the Mahdi - the Expected One. But Brit voters who believe they are simply getting a
new, centrist government, outfitted by more proletarian Marks & Spencer instead of tony Saville Row, may be in for a nasty
surprise.
copyright eric margolis 1997
Reprinted with Permission
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Eric Margolis
Syndicated Columnist/Foreign Affairs Analyst
The Toronto Sun
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