How Thatcherism Paved the Way for Tony Blair and “New Labour”

Most people are already aware that there were many similarities between Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher. Both were conviction politicians, both had political love-ins with US presidents and both liked to talk tough. Affable Tony could always ham it up with a good dose of media-friendly mock sincerity and tough talking. Thatcher and her PR people cynically forged the template for that. And both had a tendency to ignore that damned nuisance called public opinion and to land the country into a gruesome mess not of its own choosing.
Margaret Thatcher once famously stated that there is no such thing as society, implying that the individual is paramount and should not be held back by it – or at least by those sections of society for which she had a particular dislike. And, as a woman of conviction, there were plenty of those around. ‘Freedom of the individual’ was her mantra as she went on to grind organised labour into the ground, whom she labelled as “the enemy within,” to implement a range of policies in favour of the downtrodden rich and to put in place a variety policies to attack the ‘work-shy’ poor.

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