The BBC Politics Show is running a political heroes poll. Quite how Clare Short or Alex Salmond are included on it is beyond me. Anyway, the point of this post is to point out the left have swung heavily behind Tony Benn (no change there, then) and he is currently outranking the Blessed Margaret.So, time for all Conservatives to do their duty and click HERE to vote for Margaret! Voting closes next Thursday.
Thanks for the alert, Iain. I voted for Tony Benn of course.
ReplyDeleteAs for Maggie (pbuh), she was a giant among dwarves, honest and strong, but so terribly misguided at times.
My political hero is - The Unknown MP - the constituency MP who year after year takes the needs of his local people seriously and represents them as an MP should. An MP who sees that fairness and justice is applied to little people with pressing needs who visit his surgery and are helped, perhaps with a letter, or a word in the right place.
That is my hero, not some televisual soundbite merchant.
Thanks for the reminder Iain... that's another vote for Tone (not that he would appreciate this 'personality cult' nonsense.
ReplyDeleteMy gripe with that poll is that there weren't enough centerists like Denis Healey or Gordon Brown!
ReplyDeleteGiven the way the voting is going, you have to wonder where the nominations come from. Or how there is a 5-2 split to the left in the nominations. I'd guess the "whittling" played more of a part in shaping this list than any viewer voting.
ReplyDelete"Manificent" and "Kinnock" in the same sentence. Sheer lunacy.
ReplyDeleteI voted for Tony Benn. Thanks
ReplyDeleteMuch as I admire Tony Benn as a politician, I was very surprised how popular he was when I did this poll earlier. Must be the Tory accent and his fancy title.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there will be complaints over rigging if Benn wins.
ReplyDeleteProbably not as its the 'desired outcome'.
Who's that woman next to that famous man?
ReplyDeleteAdmire Tony Benn as a politician? You must be joking. A man who has been wrong about everything, yet still gets rolled out ad nauseam by the BBC as an "expert" commentator. I've seen him twice recently -- first talking of Gerald Ford, and then on the execution of Saddam Hussein -- with nothing of worth to say on either. And as for him having no time for "personality cult" nonsense, just issues you understand, what bollocks. This is a man, after all, who has been rewriting history to cast himself in the best possible light every day foe god knows how many years. It's just that he's only interested in the one personality that matters to him.
ReplyDeleteColin Campbell. Your naff comment about my hero belies your witty blog.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I admire Tony Benn's contribution to keeping the Tories in power for a decade and more I feel most of the credit should go to Maggie.
ReplyDeleteWeird.
ReplyDeleteOf the seven only one got the top job, all the rest ended up as wannbe-nevermadeits, 'cept maybe for Norm, who as far as I know never expressed any ambitions in that direction.
So what's so magnificent about most of these?
Windbags, fantasists with delusions of adequacy, a Euro-pol over-seeing corruption that would make NuLab gasp with envy, plus our Norm and Herself.
Magnificent lefties my arse.
Now if they'd put in Frank Field or Peter Shore....
As it is, they're appealing to the tribal vote: actual merit has little to do with it.
Will this post have the same effect as the Today poll that was "influenced" by the Countryside Alliance? Someone sad person with nothing better to do might complain. Then again, more traffic for you, I suppose!
ReplyDeleteThanks for mentioning this poll. As it's sadly limited to living types I've had to vote for Neil Kinnock for services against 'Militant'.
ReplyDeleteWhoever posted as Verity above was not me. I didn't know about the poll until I just read about it here, and I immediately went and voted for Maggie.
ReplyDeleteI loathe Tony Benn and all the other slithy socialist toves. Absolutely despise them.
To give him his due, compared to the current crop of illiberal, self centred, bum wipes, Wedgie actually wasn't a bad MP. Seriously misguided, maybe, but not bad.
ReplyDeleteStill can't have a loopie leftie beating the Blessed Margaret (pbuh) so I've voted appropriately. The score stands at 34.99% to 34.92% now with Maggie making a strong fight back down the far straight.
Just when I feel tempted to vote Conservative the ghost of that dreadful woman arises. It reminds me that I could never vote Tory because there are far too many of her disciples still lurking behind Cameron.
ReplyDeleteI can never ever understand the Tories weak at the knees obsession for Thatcher. This was the woman who destroyed Britain - dividing it's people, selling off everything she possibly could...transport, utilities. She began the rot admirably continued by Blair.
(Just the opinion of a floating voter who should probably accept that the Tories will take a long *long* time to change.)
Just when I feel tempted to vote Conservative the ghost of that awful woman arises. It reminds me that I could never vote Tory because there are far too many of her disciples still lurking behind Cameron.
ReplyDeleteI can never ever understand the Tories weak at the knees obsession for Thatcher. This was the woman who destroyed Britain - dividing it's people, selling off everything she possibly could...transport, utilities. She began the rot admirably continued by Blair.
(Just the opinion of a floating voter who should probably accept that the Tories will take a long *long* time to change.)
Why? As a consolation prize for being wrong about Europe, whereas you now admit that Tony Benn was right all along?
ReplyDeleteAfter all, what, exactly, was “Thatcherism”? What did she ever actually do? Well, she gave Britain the Single European Act, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Exchange Rate Mechanism, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, the replacement of O-levels with GCSEs, and the destruction of paternal authority within working-class families and communities through the destruction of that authority’s economic basis in the stockades of working-class male employment.
No Prime Minister, ever, has done more in any one, never mind all, of the causes of European federalism, Irish Republicanism, sheer economic incompetence, Police inefficiency and ineffectiveness, collapsing educational standards, and everything that underlies or follows from the destruction of paternal authority.
Meanwhile (indeed, thereby), the middle classes were transformed from people like her father into people like her son. She told us that “there is no such thing as society”, in which case there cannot be any such thing as the society that is the family, or the society that is the nation. Correspondingly, she misdefined liberty as the “freedom” to behave in absolutely any way that one saw fit. All in all, she turned Britain into the country that Marxists had always said it was, even though, before her, it never actually had been.
Specifically, she sold off national assets at obscenely undervalued prices, while subjecting the rest of the public sector (forty per cent of the economy) to an unprecedented level of central government dirigisme. She presided over the rise of Political Correctness, that most 1980s of phenomena, and so much of piece with that decade’s massively increased welfare dependency and its moral chaos, both fully sponsored by the government, and especially by the Prime Minister, of the day.
Hers was the war against the unions, which cannot have had anything to do with monetarism, since the unions have never controlled the money supply. For good or ill, but against all her stated principles, hers was the refusal (thank goodness, but then I am no “Thatcherite”) to privatise the Post Office, as her ostensible ideology would have required.
And hers were the continuing public subsidies to fee-paying schools, to agriculture, to nuclear power, and to mortgage-holders. Without those public subsidies, the fourth would hardly have existed, and the other three (then as now) would not have existed at all. So much for “You can’t buck the market”. You can now, as you could then, and as she did then. You know this from experience if that experience extends to any one or more of fee-paying schools, agriculture (or, at least, land ownership), nuclear power, and mortgage holding. The issue is not whether these are good or bad things in themselves. It is whether “Thatcherism”, as ordinarily and noisily proclaimed (or derided), was compatible with their continuation by means of “market-bucking” public subsidies. It simply was not, as it simply is not.
Hers was the ludicrous pretence to have brought down the Soviet Union merely because she happened to be in office when that Union happened to collapse, as it would have done anyway, in accordance with the predictions of (among other people) Enoch Powell. But she did make a difference internationally where it was possible to do so, precisely by providing aid and succour to Pinochet’s Chile and to apartheid South Africa. I condemn the former as I condemn Castro, and I condemn the latter as I condemn Mugabe (or Ian Smith, for that matter). No doubt you do, too. But she did not, as she still does not.
And hers was what amounted to the open invitation to Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands, followed by the (starved) Royal Navy’s having to behave as if the hopelessly out-of-her-depth Prime Minister did not exist, a sort of coup without which those Islands would be Argentine to this day.
There are many other aspects of any “Thatcherism” properly so called, and they all present her in about as positive a light. None of them, nor any of the above, was unwitting, forced on her by any sort of bullying, or whatever else her apologists might insist was the case. Rather, they were exactly what she intended.
Other than the subsidies to agriculture (then as now) and to nuclear power (now, if not necessarily then), I deplore and despise every aspect of her above record and legacy, for unashamedly Old Labour reasons. Indeed, the definition of New Labour is to support and to celebrate that record and legacy, because it did exactly as it was intended to do, entrenching, in and through the economic sphere, the social revolution of the 1960s. You should not so support or celebrate unless you wish to be considered New Labour.
But then again, who cares these days? Or, rather, who really ought to care? When the next General Election is upon us, people will have the vote who were not born when she was removed from office in order to restore the public order that had broken down because of what, in her allegedly paradigmatic United States, would have been her unconstitutional Poll Tax. At that Election, my own generation of post-Thatcher teenagers will first enter Parliament in some numbers, a few being already there. And by the time of the Election after that … well, you can finish that sentence for yourself.
Twenty Years On, as Alan Bennett might once have put it, we have an opportunity to consign her to the history books once and for all. That opportunity was denied in 1990, when her ejection by her own party turned her into a mythical figure. Such would not have been her lot if the Poll Tax had simply ensured her removal by the electorate, probably in 1991. But, better late than never, let us take our opportunity in 2007.
Get over her!
Oh, and Dean, the "credit" goes to the SDP: the combined Labour and SDP votes were higher than the Tory vote both in 1983 and in 1987. It's as simple as that; there's nothing else to it at all.
ReplyDeleteSo the "credit", if any be due, should go the last old SDP hands still active in public life: Andrew Adonis and Polly Toynbee. I hope that they are both very proud.
...or how there is a 5-2 split to the left in the nominations...
ReplyDeleteEh? This is a BBC poll after all. What do you expect? Come on, do keep up.
No offence to Norman Tebbit, but who on earth would vote for him rather than Margaret Thatcher? Surely, even he himself would vote for her, and might very well have done so?
ReplyDeleteI note that since you mentioned this Iain that MT has taken the lead.
ReplyDeleteI feel a small sense of pride in knowing my vote has helped to achieve this.
can i be alone in wondering what difference there really was 9other than a fondness for gin over tea) between Thatcher and Benn? They were both two of the bossiest and most up-their-own-urs politicians that Britain has ever known.
ReplyDeleteFloating Voter - Yackety, yackety, yack. Don't you people ever stop whining? You are not a floating voter. Your words belie your claim.
ReplyDeleteVerity - I am "you people"?!? Have we met? In fact I am just a casual reader of this blog- believe it or not I am not some part of some sinister anti Tory group!
ReplyDeleteIf this is how you would attract the undecided voter then please never ever go out canvassing!
Sorry Iain, I've already voted for Tony Benn. I can't quite understand why you haven't either ? He and Maggie have more in common than you might imagine.
ReplyDeleteBoth have realised [too late in Mrs T's case] how badly we have been stitched up by the lack of democracy in the EU project, and the fact that it is pretty much too late to do a thing about it. Euro or no Euro.
f-v, for goodness sake don't respond to verity - it only encourages her.
ReplyDeleteDifficult. No Peel, no Gladstone, no Goldwater. Not even Enoch.
ReplyDeleteOn balance, I can live with a Benn win given that, along with Foot, he probably did more than anyone to get, and then keep, Maggie in office. He is quite clearly a right-wing plant.
Talking of which, what did Lemsip Optic get as a prize for winning the Lib Dem of the year contest on your esteemed site ??
ReplyDeleteOf course, that in no way damaged the credibility of internet polls, oh no sirree...
Rejoice at that news the the old girl is back in the lead.
ReplyDeleteIain - please, please, please keep the link published near the top over the next few days so that the enemy within doesn't triumph.
I'm genuinely sorry Norman Tebbit's vote is being squeezed - he ranks far and above all the other non-entities. It won't be the first or last time he's helped Maggie at his own expense.
Oh, and Dave Lindsay - the 42/3% of the vote in 79, 83 and 87 on 70%+ turnouts rank favourably to Blair - particularly in 2005.
Floating Voter writes: "believe it or not I am not some part of some sinister anti Tory group!"
ReplyDeleteNo, I would not have characterised you so dramatically. You're not sinister. You are a lefty.
I promise I won't ever go out canvassing during a British election.
Dean, I do not dispute that it "ranks favourably to Blair". But that's not saying anything. I carry no candle for Blair, let me assure you!
ReplyDeleteIt's going to be a landslide!
ReplyDelete@ Verity:
ReplyDeleteWell it must be very convenient to believe politics is so black and white. So in your mind do floating voters not exsist? Are all people who dislike Thatcher just lefties who Cameron may as well ignore? Not very smart approach to winning support from the general public is it?
"No Prime Minister, ever, has done more in any one, never mind all, of the causes of European federalism, Irish Republicanism, sheer economic incompetence, Police inefficiency and ineffectiveness, collapsing educational standards, and everything that underlies or follows from the destruction of paternal authority"
ReplyDeleteAny thoughts on David Lindsay's words n Thatcher there Verity?;)
In my opinion - she was the best Tory Leader since Churchill despite all her flaws and contradictions.
Gaffauk - I agree. She was the best, most-principle driven, truest prime minister since Churchill. When you look at the slurry to which the British Cabinet allowed themselves to be sluice to, the heart despairs. Will we ever get our Britain back? And why did so many millions cede it away with constant votes for the vivaporous nest of Gramscians, who have accomplished much in the ten years of their destructive mission to destroy our country? How could so many people have been so stupid? But that's what the Gramscians count on. Smoke and mirrors. Divert attention.
ReplyDeleteFrance, despite les deux rives de la Mediterranée philosophy, has not sunk as low as Britain.
"She was the best, most-principle driven, truest prime minister since Churchill." Which principles, Verity? She did more than any other PM ever for European federalism, Irish Republicanism, Police ineffectiveness and inefficiency, Political Correctness, collapsing educational standards, use of public money to queer the market in favour of one's political supporters and against one's opponents, destruction of paternal authority, centralisation of local services... Are these the "principles" that you have in mind?
ReplyDeleteTony Benn, by contrast, wanted Britain to ringfence North Sea oil money outside the then-EEC, exactly as has made Norway the richest country in the world, which could have been Britain if it hadn't been for the 1979 Election. Vote Wedgie!