Why Britain is facing the return of Thatcherism on stilts

Phase two of the Farage’s grand plan happened on Thursday, when the Reform party ended the era of two-party dominance in England and shared second place with Labour in the newly elected Scottish Parliament.

Those of us who are old enough can cast our minds back 40 years to the deindustrialisation brought about by Margaret Thatcher. Her decimation of the heavy ‘smokestack’ industries at the heart of the Scottish economy brought widespread misery and a continuing legacy of towns that have never fully recovered. It is a terrible irony that, in those very places, Reform – the inheritors of Thatcher’s free market creed – managed to win thousands of votes,

It is a worse irony that the British political right, having shunned manufacturing as old-fashioned in the 1980s and 90s, now blame the globalisation they actively promoted for the loss of manufacturing from the once-commanding heights of the UK economy.

Countless British manufacturing businesses, that employed millions of men and women, were obliterated by Thatcher’s policies. The markets and jobs that were lost had to go somewhere. They went mainly to Asia.

READ MORE: Why our failure to heed Margaret Thatcher's 40-year-old climate warning is about to get real

‘A bold alternative’

Farage was a member of Thatcher’s Conservative party. In 2018, Farage said of the Thatcher years: “It was painful for some people, but it had to happen.” Tell that to the people in Glasgow, Greenock, Galashiels, Motherwell, Clydebank and a dozen more places struggling with lack of industry, low wages and now deeply rooted social problems.

So far, Farage’s Reform has succeeded in convincing many people that it can be all things to all voters. It’s saying to the world that it offers a new kind of politics, free of ideology and of the class and wealth divisions that have haunted British democracy since universal suffrage brought us mass voting.

In its Scottish manifesto, Reform wrote: “Reform UK offers a bold alternative: a radical overhaul to cut waste, lower taxes, boost private enterprise and restore our healthcare, education and infrastructure to being the best in the world... We will use our first two budgets to abolish the many cliff edges in the tax system that punish people for working more and creating value for their families and communities.”

READ MORE: It is not all gloom, here are my reasons to be cheerful in Scotland

This is what the Thatcher’s Conservative manifesto said in 1979, the year she won power: “We shall cut income tax at all levels to reward hard work, responsibility and success; tackle the poverty trap; encourage saving and the wider ownership of property; simplify taxes – like VAT; and reduce tax bureaucracy. It is especially important to cut the absurdly high marginal rates of tax both at the bottom and top of the income scale.”

Reform’s list of promises included: “Our economic plan, particularly the cap on marginal tax rates of over 50 per cent, will go a long way to make sure that work always pays, as will the new job opportunities created by a growing economy.”

This mirrors the Thatcherite belief that wealth ‘trickles down’ from the wealthy to the less well off because more overall wealth is created when the rich pay less tax, which makes them more entrepreneurial because they have more capital to invest.

READ MORE: Why Nigel Farage’s subservient attitude towards Donald Trump should be a warning to patriotic voters

‘No, no, no’

Trickle-down theory holds that as the economic cake gets bigger everyone’s income rises. The notion has been universally discredited. Instead, what we have seen over the past 40 years is the rich getting richer and the poor and the working class getting poorer.

Farage’s views on the European Union echo those of Thatcher. “No, no, no,” she shouted in the House of Commons in October 1990 as she dismissed proposals for greater political and economic integration in Europe.

Thatcher, though, was one of the pre-eminent leaders behind the creation of the European Single Market for goods and services. Launching it to UK business in April 1988, she said: “It's your job, the job of business, to gear yourselves up to take the opportunities which a single market of nearly 320 million people will offer.

“Just think for a moment what a prospect that is. A single market without barriers – visible or invisible – giving you direct and unhindered access to the purchasing power of over 300 million of the world's wealthiest and most prosperous people.”

Urgent action required

Today there are more than 450 million consumers in the Single Market. That we have lost all the benefits of access to that market can be safely blamed on Farage and his wholly destructive campaign to take the UK out of the EU.

That Reform won seats at Holyrood is not the fault of voters. It is the fault of the other parties that have controlled Westminster for the past 40 years and Holyrood since 1999. Labour, Conservative, and to a lesser extent, the SNP, have simply not done enough to improve the lives and life chances of the ordinary citizen.

There has been a lot of wringing of hands and the balm of new sports centres, town centre regeneration plans and shiny new school and universities, but the fundamentals of growing poverty, static wages, soaring property costs and low-quality jobs have remained.

Now, action is urgent. Failing to act now, in London and Edinburgh, will deliver Farage’s Thatcherism on stilts at the next UK general election.

Martin Roche sits on the executive of the European Movement in Scotland