John McDonnell's Thatcher assassination joke

[UnquietDad]

here

Acceptable or not?

I think he has had an easy ride over this. Imagine a right-of-centre politician saying they wish they'd assassinated Harold Wilson or Gordon Brown.

Prolesworth Have you heard the old idiom about bad workmen blaming their tools?

Labour would have more of a case for complaining about the legitimacy of electoral results if they themselves hadn't benefitted massively.

LadyBlaBa The fact remains that she was undefeated when the people were asked to give their judgement. Apart from the mining towns, and later (after the poll tax debacle) Scotland, she wasn't widely hated during the 80s. The Guardianistas are trying to rewrite history painting her as being despised in her own time. It just isn't true.

The same is true of Tony Blair, incidentally - as galling as it is to those of us on the right.

He was undefeated at the ballot box. We just have to swallow that bitter pill.

It is much easier for us, though - because often he was a Tory with a red rosette

My point is that she wasn't nearly widely hated as you lot try to make out.

Labour have very successfully created a mythology about Thatcher. For example, she didn't cut public spending - she increased it. She brought the Nissan plant to Sunderland. Manufacturing declined by more under Labour than they did under the Tories. Etc etc etc.

Yet she is always painted as a hated witch. It just wasn't like that.

"Apart from the mining towns, and later (after the poll tax debacle) Scotland, she wasn't widely hated during the 80s."
hahahaha that's a joke right??
apart from the teachers
and the unions
and the manufacturing industries
and, yeah, the poll tax protestors
oh and anyone poor, or vulnerable.
no, apart from that....

nooooooo, we all LOVED Thatcher in the 80s. God yeah, we even had little teddies made of her so we could take her to bed at night.

I admit to a visceral dislike for the immense, and deliberate damage the woman did. And she would consider assassination jokes to be a badge of pride, tbh.

longfingernails - can you make that point about public spending on one of those threads where the Tories bang on about being the responsible party that always brings down public spending, please?

(Although IIRC public spending went up because we had mass unemployment hence millions of people on benefits. Not because Thatch was doing anything positive or useful.)

I really can't imagine the lady being particularly sympathetic to the whinging softy Tories who are so appalled by this oh-so-horrifying joke. She was well hard. She had no time for the wets, or for anyone who was less forceful than Tebbit. She had no time for the anti-apartheid struggle, either, that's probably why the Thatcher youth thought their gags about Hang Nelson Mandela would go down so well.

edam

There is nothing wrong with increasing public spending. I want to increase public spending if it is possible whilst keeping taxes low. A caricature of this position: if our economy magically doubled in size, we could decrease taxes by 25% and yet increase public spending by 50%.

The problem is with increasing public spending by borrowing or raising tax rates astronomically high. Both prevent private enterprise.

Not balancing the budget over a medium-term timeframe is idiotic. That is what Gordon Brown did.

He want on a borrowing binge in the boom years. He also borrowed unnecessarily during the recession. Most of the stimulus was monetary, through low interest rates, and controversially, quantitative easing. Some of the fiscal part helped (though will hurt more in the longer term) - such as the car scrappage scheme. Most of the fiscal part (ie the VAT cut) did not.

Thatcher is not as tough and hard-nailed as the lefties make out. She was a human being who shed a few tears when she left. She did good things and bad things, but she was an exceptional person. She was a formidable foe for the socialists, which is why they hate her so much. She defeated them time and time again in spite of all their calumnies against her, and the people voted her back in again and again. She was respected worldwide by powerful leaders, faced great challenges and met them all with courage. She has a place in history as one of our greatest Prime Ministers. That is why sick jokes by this nobody are in poor taste. This simpleton, one of Labour's best and brightest, tried to gain the favour of the unions at the meeting by cracking his Thatcher party piece joke. He isn't fit to wipe her boots, but he is in with a chance of taking over the Labour party.

There is nothing "progressive" about spending public money on debt interest instead of (for example) pupil premiums.

Under Labour's plans, 10p in every tax pound would go on debt interest by the end of the next Parliament.

The short-term gains aren't worth the long-term pain. Better instead to make slow, steady progress.

yes claig, we all know you love Maggie and hate Labour. Other people might have different opinions. (Shedding a few tears? Only for herself, when your lot knifed her in the back. Never for any of her victims.)

And what's with all the IRA stuff? Jeez Louise, some Tory posters appear not to have noticed that there's been this thing called a peace process - something the Major government played a role in - and they even let Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness into government these days?

Oh, I've just remembered, I think she shed a few tears for her own incompetent revolutionary plotter of a son when he managed to lose himself in the desert.

Funny how it was Thatcher's offspring who tried to overthrow a government...

now that Lord Myners is no longer taking the socialist shilling, he has come out with what he really thinks of the progressives.

"There is nothing progressive about a government that consistently spends more than it can raise in taxation and certainly nothing progressive that endows generations to come with the liabilities incurred with respect to the current generation."

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7812453/Ex-City-minister-Lord-Myners-attacks-Labours-ec onomic-record.html

I would say that Margaret Thatcher was the most widely and intensely loathed leader in living memory LFN. Those who admired her did so with a passion - but a huge chunk of the population feared and despised her.

claig Lord Myners seems to have had a epiphany.

A pity he wasn't saying that when he was in government, now, isn't it?

onebatmother, I think Tony Blair holds that title. He is such an embarrassment, that even his own party wants to distance themselves from him. Thatcher is respected and admired by Tories, but many Labour voters are only too glad to see the back of the grinning self-serving duplicitous clown known as Tory Blair.

claig Gordon Brown was much more unpopular than Tony Blair ever was.

Here is the IPSOS Mori data showing that Brown's highest dissatisfaction rating was 72%, in July 2008. Thatcher's highest dissatisfaction rating was 76% at the height on the poll tax debacle, in March 1990. Blair's highest disapproval rating was 68% in Januray 2007.

But if you look at the whole series of data rather than the extremes, you will see that broadly, dissatisfaction with Blair was quite low. Dissatisfaction with Thatcher was medium - but dissatisfaction with Brown was consistently high.

www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemID=88&view=wide

www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItem Id=2438&view=wide

www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/poll.aspx?oItemId=2438&view=wide

Brown seems to be the most consistently unpopular Prime Minister since records began.

Hmmm some of those links don't work for some reason but I am sure you are all clever enough to find the pages I mean!

interesting figures. I just get the sense that Brown will be invited to future Labour conferences as a guest, whereas Blair will be asked to stay away for the good of the party.

Today programme this morning pointed out the Tories are lying about the figures - pretending they've only just discovered the size of the deficit, in order to soften us all up for swingeing cuts. Yet all the figures they cite were known and were publicly available. Check on iPlayer - they had the FT journalist and presenter of the stats programme More or Less on. (Programme reports on stats quoted in public discourse and whether they are reasonable - not just govt. but other issues.)

agree with you edam. They are lying, pretending that they have just opened up the books and discovered a black hole. Alistair Darling said that the Daily Mail had predicted interest payments months ago, which were larger than what the Tories are now claiming. Of course they had an idea about what was involved, even if Darling's forecasts were often too optimistic. All of them lie, underestimate or exaggerate the figures to their own advantage.

edam

Yes, of course they are spinning when they say it was "worse than they expected". Are you really surprised?

It really isn't the most heinous sin in the political world, is it?

It is pretty ironic from a government that promised us the 'new politics'.

Interesting.

I think the reason for the "joke", and I use the word advisedly, is because Thatcher became entirely emblematic of a certain approach to life, i.e. free market capitalism/ classic liberalism on the economic side (e.g. reduced trade union power, privatisation of state utilities, sale of public housing) and what would be widely considered a neo-conservative approach to foreign policy (e.g. closer alliance with the US, Euro-sceptiscism, increased nuclear spending).

Some people agreed with this approach, some people hated this approach. Their are, however, very few other politicians who have become so individually identified with a certain policy approach as Thatcher did - we still refer to "Thatcherism" today. We certainly don't refer to "Footism" or "Heathism" or "Wilsonism".

For me, "Thatcher" is increasingly less of a person and more of a "Thatcherism" movement/ sentiment/ policy approach, particularly as time passes. And when people speak strongly against or for her, they're speaking for or against the policies of which she was emblematic.

Not saying that this justifies what is obviously a very low quality joke but maybe explains why a comment like that would draw less flak than it would if levelled against other individuals.

there seems to be some new definition of 'destroyed' that i am unaware of - destroyed to me means more than 'became an area of high unemployment'

and frankly, i can think of plenty of leaders that more people hate. as per previous links - plenty of people disliked Brown!

this punch and judy style invective i find highly inappropriate - there are people in this world worthy of loathing, hatred, disgust. MT isn't one of them - just a Prime Ministr with the same level of responsibilty for the worlds ills as any other prime minister.