David Cameron's rhetoric on social justice is worthless given that it was his party which broke our economy
The election approaches and Britain begins the long haul out of recession. What will the Conservatives do to the economy? David Cameron has claimed Margaret Thatcher's economic revolution as his own. She had, he said, engineered an enterprise economy that was the envy of the world. Today "our country does not face economic breakdown. We've won the economic argument." But, after three turbulent decades, it has ended in calamity.
The Conservative economic revolution of the 1980s casts a long shadow. It broke the power of organised labour, deregulated the economy and opened it up to global market forces. The 1980 Housing Act and the "right to buy" launched a neoliberal hegemony. Geoffrey Howe's 1981 austerity budget of public spending cuts and tax increases pitched Britain into mass unemployment and helped destroy the last vestiges of the postwar welfare consensus. His goal was to transfer wealth from the public to the private sector, and so unleash free enterprise.
More here.
The election approaches and Britain begins the long haul out of recession. What will the Conservatives do to the economy? David Cameron has claimed Margaret Thatcher's economic revolution as his own. She had, he said, engineered an enterprise economy that was the envy of the world. Today "our country does not face economic breakdown. We've won the economic argument." But, after three turbulent decades, it has ended in calamity.
The Conservative economic revolution of the 1980s casts a long shadow. It broke the power of organised labour, deregulated the economy and opened it up to global market forces. The 1980 Housing Act and the "right to buy" launched a neoliberal hegemony. Geoffrey Howe's 1981 austerity budget of public spending cuts and tax increases pitched Britain into mass unemployment and helped destroy the last vestiges of the postwar welfare consensus. His goal was to transfer wealth from the public to the private sector, and so unleash free enterprise.
More here.
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