To wonder who is more hated, Blair or Thatcher?

[WetAugust]

Seems that Blair is planning a return to UK politics.

So manufacturing production wouldn't have shifted to East Asia if the unions were still in control?

It would have of course but without the massive relaxation of trade tariffs (rather than breaking the unions), the effects on manufacturing would not have been as great. I actually think it's been fantastic that we can get such cheap imports from East Asia. It has definitely raised the material standard of living for many even if they, or the country, are not necessarily wealthier for it. I do think unions were often pig-headedly obstructionist and not always necessarily for the benefit of their members. However, I also think that there were many of Thatcher's generation who honestly believed that if they were able to somehow just destroy the unions, they'd magically get back the sort of working class that they had throughout the nineteenth century and the earlier part of the twentieth and that the UK would be able to compete. Smart capital was moving their money out of mass manufacturing in western countries at all though. Why I don't like Blair is because his ilk have made a concerted effort to try and destroy constitutional rights after 9/11. For all her faults, I don't think that was something Thatcher was trying to achieve. That's not conservatism, that's the clear path to tyranny.

Hmm, I'd have answered Thatched in a heartbeat a couple of years ago, but amazingly I think Cameron has toppled her from her unenviable position!

Why didn't you include him, btw?

Don't get me wrong - I was sorely disappointed in Blair not long after his election, when it became apparent that New Labour were just continuing Tory policies with a transparently thin veneer of left-wingism - but she started a lot of the rot.

What "rot" did she start? Thatcher had nothing to do with Labour's policies post 1997!

Labour weren't winning in 1983, not with Michael Foot in charge.

Which was a crying shame really, because he was an extremely intelligent and caring man.

He got stitched up by the right-wing press in DuffleGate.

I haven't read the whole thread. Overall, no doubt that Thatcher is hated more than Blair. Personally, I hate the result of Thatcher's policies more, but I despise Blair as an individual.

To be honest I feel utterly disenfranchised with British politics and slightly dispairing that as it stands, no party appears particularly deserving of my vote.

Thatcher turned the economy around and you can be sure she would never have allowed the over dependancy on state handouts for everything and anything that multiplied over the last Labour government. If Blair had not been giving handouts left right and centre to every lazy, feckless demographic nobody would have voted Labour after Blair's first term.

No she just made thousands of people unemployed and then tried to deny them any means of providing a dignified existence for themselves. Bloody old bat.

The economy and peoples lives seem to be too entirely different things for free marketeers. The economy is a man made thing, it should be regulated and controlled so that it benefits us, all of us.