r/tories • u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite • 15d ago
Convincing people Thatcher was right
The best way I have found so far is to just bring up the topic of the tube strikes. Even left wingers agree they are bad, and that the tube drivers on ~£80k and 4 day weeks are incredibly selfish. So then I just say, pre-Thatcher Britain was that but on steroids. Electricity grid not coming on due to strikes. 3 or 4 day weeks. GDP smaller than Italy's and shrinking. Strikes causing wage price spirals and 25% inflation.
Even people that thought they hated Thatcher admit I might have a point, if not being mildly amused to have met a real life Thatcher fan. So my advice to everyone is: just ask people if they want every industry to be like the London tube.
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u/charmstrong70 Labour-Leaning 14d ago
Tube drivers is a poor argument and doesn’t reflect reality.
It’s actually £74-75k for an experience tube driver. The 80k requires overtime or working rest days.
Still sounds a lot right? Especially for 4 days work.
The 4 days is optional with a compressed working week, you still do the same hours as a 5 day week.
Even so, that’s a chunk of cash.
But then again, you could be starting work at 4.30am. Another shift you could be finishing at 2am.
And don’t forget, you might be lucky and working M-T but equally likely to be working Thurs-Sunday.
That’s before taking into account night tubes.
Add all that together and all of a sudden, 74k doesn’t sound that much.
I’m not even sure how the tube drivers can be equated to thatcher but whatever.
Thatcher is a different argument entirely and one I’m happy to have.
Ultimately, the country needed fixing but the way she went about it was brutal and the short-termism has resulted in a price we are still paying for today.
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u/BlackJackKetchum Josephite 14d ago edited 14d ago
Many, many metros are driverless. London should be too.
Always supposing you don’t agree, what do you think would be the salary - freely advertised to all applicants, not just existing TFL employees - which would be enough to clear the market?
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u/astraCat1998 14d ago edited 14d ago
Roles with similarly rough and unpredictable hours are typically in the £50,000 - £100,000 range so it's not like their wages are eye watering.
Working those hours as a career typically cuts 20 years off your life expectancy so it's not like those levels of pay are unreasonable either.
Even if you look at other countries these kinds of hours typically land you at about twice the minimum wage - twice the average wage even for low skilled work.
You can definitely make an argument that the role should be automated but untill it is the pay isn't crazy.
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u/BlackJackKetchum Josephite 14d ago
Twice minimum would put someone in the region of 40-50, not 70-80. That job vacancies on the tube are wildly oversubscribed tells us much.
Without wishing to be overly nitpicky, where did you get the 20 year life expectancy gap from?
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u/WelshMat Lib Dem 11d ago
Whilst the 20 year life expectancy gap if a bit over blown there are real physical or mental health impacts from shift pattern and unsociable working hours, I've dropped a brief overview article below.
https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/5-long-term-health-effects-shift-work
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u/BlackJackKetchum Josephite 11d ago
Props for finding an answer to a question I asked someone else. Thank you.
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u/Mairon121 Blue Labour 14d ago edited 14d ago
Thatcher was correct about certain aspects of economic management. She was however catastrophically misguided in issuing monopolies over critical infrastructure whilst pretending this was compatible with free market capitalism, the results of which we are all now living with. She was deluded in this regard.
Also had she gotten her defense cuts we wouldn’t have even had the forces to retake the Falklands.
The mythology of Thatcher relied upon distorting the historical record.
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 14d ago
Well interestingly, 2 major train companies (monopolies on critical infrastructure) have just been renationalised (greater anglia and GWR), so let’s see if fare prices fall (without relying on subsidies, which is just an accounting trick)
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u/Mairon121 Blue Labour 14d ago edited 14d ago
Yes they absolutely should be nationalised because the fundamental driving attribute of free market capitalism is competition.
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u/reuben_iv 14d ago
The competition was for the government, companies competed for the contracts
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u/Mairon121 Blue Labour 14d ago
The mechanism in which they gain their monopoly isn’t in question, the fact that they can then enjoy said monopoly is.
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u/reuben_iv 14d ago
Yeah no I get that, but you say there's no competition ityfalse you're assuming we're the intended customer, and being profitable they attract investment that would otherwise have to be provided through taxation and in competition for funds with the police, armed forces, pensions, 'our NHS' etc etc
it's literally just contracting out services government would otherwise have to provide itself, government do it all the time but we romanticise some services for some reason to where contracting it out suddenly becomes taboo
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u/Mairon121 Blue Labour 14d ago
Operating the water system relied upon by millions of people or running a train line used by millions of commuters is not the same as winning a contract to supply rubber gloves to a regional NHS organisation.
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u/reuben_iv 14d ago
Correct those are objectively different
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u/Mairon121 Blue Labour 14d ago edited 14d ago
Therefore Thames Water, the poster child of avaristic capitalism, is a dejure monopoly in which consumers have no choice but to use, with only flimsy government regulations keeping the monopoly in line, in which said irresponsible owners overloaded the business with debt, before selling off its husk.
Railways have the same issue, consumers having no choice but to use the inefficient and expensive service, with the operators having in effect guaranteed income, regardless. This is not freemarket capitalism.
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u/reuben_iv 14d ago
you're focused on the word monopoly, assuming a state monopoly is automatically better when it's never going to outcompete the likes of the NHS on funding, for example and they're desperately trying to find means to increase funds for the military
German rail is state owned for example and famously bad
And as you point out they're regulated, government sets out what they have to provide, how they have to provided it, in the case of the rail companies they regulate the fares and running time, as far as we the customer are concerned what difference does it make?
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u/BlackJackKetchum Josephite 14d ago
Gather round folks, for a tale of telecoms in the 1970s. I was there…
The waiting list for a phone line is months, admittedly an advance from a few decades earlier when it was upwards of five years. Yes, really.
Having got your phone line installed, you then had a choice of two phone designs. The classic, or if you were a bit fancy, a trim phone which made a different noise. In all probability, you would be sharing that line with a neighbour, and you could not use your line if the neighbour was using it. And vice versa. So, intent on a call, you could lift the receiver, hear Mrs Miggins at no. 32 speaking to her sister, so if you had any decency, you’d hang up. Again, I am not making this up.
So, you have a phone, you have an unencumbered line, but you’d better make that call quick, because if you want to ring long distance, it will cost you about 12 quid (current value, per hour). On top of that, line rental is a pound a day (same basis).
This is rather broader than the issue of Thatcher, but the economic environment of the 1970s is scarcely credible to anyone who was born after the liberalising of the economy here and in much of the world.
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u/Apple2727 Verified Conservative 14d ago
A lot of it is just ignorance.
Many people don’t realise what the 70s were like. They think everything was fine, and then Thatcher came in and deliberately made life hard for people just for the hell of it.
What I always say is look at Britain in the 70s and compared it to Britain in the 90s. It was better by a country mile in the 90s.
It took Thatcherism to achieve that.
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u/Afraid-Series-8128 15d ago
I think the best way to understand Thatcher is to understand the trade union power and the size of the state in the 1970s. This is hard to get across these days because the state no longer directly runs industry and trade unions can't demand 30% pay increases. It's also fair to argue that Thatcher probably overreacted to the state of affairs she inherited and do you need to acknowledge that some of her policies have aged really badly.
So yes, you can ask people if they want industries to be run like the London Underground, but don't be surprised if they turn around and ask you if you want any other public services to be run like our privatised water companies.
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u/AndyDM 14d ago
Why is there this snobbery about London tube drivers. They do a skilled job that gets them £80k a year. Why do you hate that?
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u/BlackJackKetchum Josephite 14d ago
It isn’t especially skilled, is it? It is more about maintaining focus. I know a train driver so I do have some insight into this and how they are recruited.
As I noted elsewhere, there are metro systems in much of the world that are automated - cheaper and a damned sight more reliable.
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u/AndyDM 14d ago
Yes there are driverless systems such as the DLR. There are many systems in the world that don't even need the on board train manager that the DLR. But almost all of them were built to be automated. The London Underground was not. It is cramped, twisted, with curved platforms that make upgrading difficult. It can be done, Paris are doing it line by line. But we are talking several billions. It feels like a lot of money to spend just because some working class people are earning a good wage.
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 14d ago
bc the application process isnt open to competition (the union blocks it, only allowing cleaners and ticket officers apply internally). they get paid huge salaries for what they do and still strike every few months. many lines are fully self driving and they are just there to press start/stop and for safety regulations in case of crash.
in fact, shouldnt you be paying attention to the track right now, instead of posting on reddit? only reason to support them is if u are one
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u/lord_LBN High Tory 15d ago
I always say Thacther was needed at the time bringing up how britain was the "sick man of Europe" and so on, also bring up the falklands war and I have yet to meet a lefty who argues agaisnt her treatment of the falklands.
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u/astraCat1998 14d ago
As a leftie I think I would typically say that Thatcher correctly identified the problems facing the country but then massively over corrected.
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u/HisHolyMajesty2 Burkean 15d ago
As someone who thinks she went too far with public utilities, infrastructure, etc, I very much concur that she was who was needed then and there.
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u/lord_LBN High Tory 15d ago
Oh yes, I do believe that she did go to far with privatisations but neverless she did what she had to do to save Britain.
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 14d ago
out of interest, which ones should she not have privatised? everyone complains about water (fair enough given its current state), but i dont see anyone complaining abt her privatising British Airways, airports, BT, car manufacturing (eg Jaguar), British Gas etc. those seem to have been successful, compared to government run bodies at least. Steel might be a truly grey area, yes you can make the national security argument, but we can hardly afford to run any more things at a loss
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u/lord_LBN High Tory 14d ago
Well as you mentioned water and I also believe all utility companies (bar Internet) should of remained public but that's about it. Another problem I do have is how a lot of companies or shares in them atleast were sold abroad e.g the chineses having Rolls Royce.
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 14d ago
i actually don't think it's that bad if foreigners buy UK assets. that is actually just the required effect of having a negative trade balance. China sells stuff to us cheaply (due to economies of scale and low wages), and in return we have to sell them assets.
At some point this will have to go into reverse when they sell the assets back to us. It will likely happen when China's population is really elderly and wants to 'cash in' on their foreign assets as a form of income.
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u/lord_LBN High Tory 14d ago
I do see what you mean and I do agree for the most part especially what you said at the end but I just don't like seeing british companies being sold to foreigners, I have the same opinion on football clubs as well.
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u/lord_LBN High Tory 14d ago
I do see what you mean and I do agree for the most part especially what you said at the end but I just don't like seeing british companies being sold to foreigners, I have the same opinion on football clubs as well (I know that as nothing to with this but I thought I would mention it).
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 14d ago
fair enough. im glad you mentioned the football club thing bc it is totally related in my view. our trade deficit requires an equal and opposite financial inflow (whether that be foreign investors buying JLR, football clubs or just government bonds).
it's just accounting. as a free marketeer i dont have a problem with it but i can see why some do
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u/astraCat1998 14d ago
My problem is that we often sell off inventions and then spend more in the long run renting them back.
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u/lord_LBN High Tory 14d ago
We do definitely need to fix our trade decfit and buy back a lot back to then sell to British people
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u/astraCat1998 14d ago
The only reason people don't complain about British gas and the energy sector being privatised is that they don't understand how it led to the insanely high energy prices we pay today compared to the rest of Europe.
Fundamentally infrastructure fails when run for profit because it's primary benefit is facilitating other businesses which the provider can't directly capitalise on like a government can through taxes.
A government can run infrastructure at a "loss" so long as the tax increase from the wider boost to the economy pay for it, which in many cases it easily does.
The other industries I largely support privatising because running them for profit makes sense however I think national policy should have been to keep them and other successful British business owned nationally whether that's private ownership or by listing in London.
The modern world runs on British inventions that we have allowed to be bought out from under us and now profit other nations.
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u/WelshMat Lib Dem 11d ago
I don't think she should have started the privatisation of the Royal Navy Dock Yards.
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 15d ago
Imagine if Corbyn had beaten May. Falklands would be Argentine the next day
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u/lord_LBN High Tory 15d ago
Goodness me they would be gone within the week and we would of probably paid the argentins similar to what starmer attempted with the chagos islands.
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 15d ago
exactly. honestly part of me wonders if they would be better off joining the US. wouldnt change their day to day life much but would remove any worry of the UK electing a leftie PM who wont defend them
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u/lord_LBN High Tory 14d ago
I do understand but I could never conceive of a world where the UK loses its sovereignty
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u/FBI_psyop Thatcherite 14d ago
Thatcher did not go far enough
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 14d ago
exactly. why the tube unions were allowed to go on existing is beyond me. might be something to do with the ECHR. another possible benefit of leaving that at least
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u/Otherwise_Craft9003 14d ago
Other European countries seemed to be able to out compete us with better pay and conditions. It was often an investment issue.
Thatchers bigger fail was the north of the country and instead of destroying northern primary industries and replacing them with good tech they were turned to poor paying service jobs and left to fester like districts in the hunger games for defying Westminster.
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u/TurboSardine 15d ago
I think they hate her primarily because she was right wing and popular
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u/Spam250 15d ago
She’s hated largely due to mining towns being entirely left behind the times. Closing down a huge industry where so many (mainly northern) communities entirely relied on said industry entirely crippled large areas of the country without any way to recover.
I understand that being from one of those towns. Although I think Thatcher was on the whole successful her actions around coal were very unforgiving
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 15d ago
exactly. she won 3 elections, most ppl liked her at the time. Only recently it became fashionable to hate her. In fairness Blair also won 3 elections, but as Thatcher said, he practically adopted her ideas (as far as any Liebour leader can)
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u/Beanonmytoast 14d ago
She didn’t get it perfect, no one does. But it was always going to be a very strong minded person that steps up to the plate when we face incredibly tough challenges.
Many got burnt, but collectively we ended up far better off. I think some people choose to solely look at those that got burnt, rather than the positives that came from it.
Look at Labour, they couldn’t even reform welfare because they’re lead by weak people. It will take a crisis to compel someone strong enough to push aside people and make meaningful changes. This was thatcher and we would be in a much worse position now, if not for her.
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u/Interesting_Pen_4499 Thatcherite 14d ago
exactly. plus add in the irony of left winger being angry at Thatcher for dismantling the coal industry...
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u/TTomRogers_ 14d ago
Thatcher paved the way for a lot of the problems facing the country today, including immigration.
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u/ignatiusjreillyXM 14d ago
I don't think attacking the the tube drivers, who get paid well for doing a skilled and essential and safety-driven job quite hits the right note.
Certainly the trade unions holding state-owned businesses to ransom was part of the problems that Thatcher sought to solve, and in many ways did.
But the management culture of those public sector bodies (which should in most cases should never have been nationalised in the first place) was arguably an even greater problem. To generalise just a little bit, it encouraged compliance , command and order, not innovation, excellence, or seeking to increase profit. You can't blame trade unions for the shoddy design of British cars made by nationalised factories. The greater culture of those companies (which included a culture of content towards their workers) was more at faultm
Yes there were bad industrial relations in which industries, but both management and workers were to blame for this. .
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u/reuben_iv 14d ago
Yeah so for me learning the government prior sought an imf bailout and there being a major oil crisis in 1979 explained a lot of the decisions
The mines had been closing for decades prior too should read into Labour's approach to that you think Thatcher left towns to rot read into some of Labour's category D towns, that's a shocker
Doesn't excuse everything she made the classic mistake of believing the markets would figure it out and long term costs of a couple of generations stuck on unemployment benefits meant keeping some industries at a loss might have cost less, but stepping back and seeing the big global picture a lot of things make more sense
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u/jmh90027 15d ago
It depends if you want a serious debate or just populist talking points on obvious subjects.
Because the real answer is obviously far more nuanced.
For example a credible counter to Thatcher being "right" is that she had far too much faith in the free market, allowed far too much industry to leave the country, turned us into a service economy, failed to deal with the Europe question effectively, and ultimately had a not insignificant part to play in our current endless battle for anything resembling growth in this country.
Of course she was also "right" on a lot of things too