There has been much speculation in the press as to whether the upcoming election will be a re-run of 1992 or 1997, in other words, whether the Tories will manage to scrape a small majority against the odds or there will be a Labour landslide. Even accepting the essential futility of attempts to elicit exact parallels between the past and the present, there is merit in looking at the bigger picture of where the political and social winds are pointing in comparison to the past.
Comparisons to 1992 look a little thin on the ground, other than the Tories having then been in power for a long time. Yet in Labour under Kinnock, they faced an opponent not seen as having changed as much as in reality it had, and the memories of how extreme Labour had become during the 1980s had not faded (and in that there is a warning for Tories who expect to come back into power within five years).
A comparison with 1997 looks more immediately appealing comparison in that the appetite for change among voters seems now fully set as it was then. But I think the most significant difference is in the state of the country. In some ways the Labour’s then anthem of “things can only get better” was spot on: the economy was in great shape, public finances excellent and the entire cultural and social life of the nation was undergoing a profound and meaningful period of optimism and growth. It was a beautifully disingenuous refrain as things were indisputably getting better and had been doing so for a few years.
That was then, and it seems a world away from where we are today. But the country in 1979 looked very similar to today: a sclerotic economy with little or no productivity growth in relative decline with its neighbours; where inflation left people struggling in a cost of living crisis; a state where lack of funding at national and local level had left basic services overstretched and threadbare leaving a feeling that nothing in the country worked; and high taxes which fed into a narrative that it was not worth bothering to try and succeed. It was a socially and culturally exhausted place which had come out of a period of mass strikes weary and fed up.
Then the political parties themselves. The Labour Party, then the natural party of government having won four of the previous six elections, was horribly split with an extreme ideological membership seeking to wrest control from MPs many of whom were considered ideological traitors and centrists. There was a campaign for labour democracy, among whose leaders was a young activist called Jon Lansman, who sought to create “democratic” control over party policy by the members and through mandatory re-selection sought to impose the views of a membership (whose views were off the charts extreme compared to most voters) on the MPs. Finally, there was entryism by Militant, a revolutionary body who sought to take control of the party in a way not dissimilar, but perhaps less openly, than Respect/UKIP has and continues to do with the Tories today.
Does this all sound familiar? It is because it is. The Tories are falling into a civil war in the same way that Labour did in the late 70s and early 80s, and with the same consequences for their electability in front of a country that does not do ideological purity.
On the other hand, Thatcher had taken control of the Tory party in the teeth of internal opposition and, while far more cautious and pragmatic than her current cheerleaders ever credit, was nevertheless determined that real change had to be effected to change the country from its trajectory of decline. And she was tough enough to see it through. In some ways, Starmer can seem the first true heir to Thatcher that we have seen since the 1980s as he is the first leader to have taken such ruthless control of the living argument that is the Labour Party, and as events such as Gaza has shown he is also not for turning (albeit it is worth noting that when Thatcher said she was not for turning, it was exactly what she then did in ditching the more simplistic version of monetarism).
Finally, I leave you with a conversation between Callaghan and Bernard Donoughue in the run-up to the 1979 election, where Callaghan said to his friend and adviser not to worry about the next election because sometimes the country just wants a change and this was one of those times – so the Labour party would lose – but they would be back within a few years as the thing about Thatcher was that the public did not like the way she looked, did not like the way she spoke and she just did not connect with them at all.
It was 18 years before there was another Labour prime minister.
