Thatcherism Today

Mark Perryman calls time on the forthcoming Thatcher Centenary.

Margaret Thatcher’s 13 October 2025 centenary is a moment to reflect on how she, or more accurately ‘Thatcherism’, so decisively shaped the 1980s. And for ever more too, the post-war consensus she deconstructed and to date never to return. 

The Labour historian Jim Fyrth describes what framed this consensus that had previously so decisively shaped British society and economy 1945-79.

“A mixture of Socialist, Labour, Keynesian, Fabian/Liberal and anti-Fascist ideas that was strongly anti-establishment and anti-capitalist, and was hostile to those who were held responsible for poverty and unemployment and for appeasement of the Fascist dictators.” 

Wow! It was this combination that was the basis of Labour’s 1945 strength, what Fyrth admiringly dubs a ‘popular front of the mind’ the plurality of influences and ideas, the breadth of support. And it is this which produced an historically unique moment:

” It looked as though Conservative supremacy in society might be quite overthrown and a new hegemony of the Left be established.” 

But despite the populist idealism of Aneurin Bevan ‘We have been the dreamers, we have been the sufferers, and now we are the builders’ any likelihood of a ‘ hegemony of the left’ was replaced by the early 1950s, and thereafter by a consensus between right-wing Labour and progressive conservatism. Popularly known as ‘Butskellism’, fusing Hugh Gaitskell, Labour leader 1955-63. with Tory Cabinet Minister Rab Butler 1951-64.  Better than what followed when another ‘-ism’, Thatcherism, dismantled that consensus but by no means as good as it might have been.       

Stuart Hall prefaced the entrenchment of Thatcherism that would commence with her leading the Tories’ rout of Labour in the May 1979 General Election with an essay for the January 1979 edition of the magazine Marxism Today. It was this essay ‘The Great Moving Right Show‘ that would spark a wide-ranging debate not only on Thatcherism but what Hall argued facilitated it, a deep-seated structural and ideological crisis of the left.

As Hall developed his description of the Thatcherite project it became more and more terrifying, but inspiring too. Terrifying in so far as what Thatcher was able to achieve, inflicting defeat after defeat on her opponents most spectacularly the miners’ strike of 1984-85. Inspiring, in so far as what Labour, and the wider left, could achieve with a hegemonic project on the scale of Thatcherism. 

Hall listed those elements required for a hegemonic project to succeed:

“The attempt to put together a new ‘historical bloc’; new political configurations and ‘philosophies’: a profound restructuring of the state and the ideological discourses which construct the crisis and represent it as it is ‘lived’ as a practical reality; new programmes and policies, pointing to a new result, a new sort of ‘settlement’.”    

Of course, none of this appeared in the Tories’ manifesto nor in Thatcher’s campaign speeches and broadcasts. And no I’m not suggesting that because they didn’t appear on Blair’s 1997 pledge cards nor in and amongst Starmer’s 2024 missions this is the damning evidence required that ‘The Great Moving Right Show’ has never been superseded by ‘The Great Moving Left Show’ But read through Hall’s list and ask yourself is this what Blair(ism) and Starmer(ism)’s politics amount to?  

And if they don’t, is it enough when Labour achieves the kind of landslide victory Blair did in 1997 and Starmer in 2024? Hall’s argument was that Thatcherism had all the makings of success, her utter destruction of a post-war consensus that had lasted since 1945. In contrast, the complete failure of Blair, and Starmer, to replace Thatcherism/Neoliberalism. Helpfully, Hall detailed what elements would be required for such a break:

“These do not ’emerge’: they have to be constructed. Political and ideological work is required to disarticulate old formations, and to rework their elements into new configurations.”  

Blair’s legacy, Starmer’s prospects, should be judged precisely in how far they fulfil this task. For all the good, and there was a lot, that Blair did, and all the good that Starmer will do, which I entirely expect there will be, this surely is the least we can expect of Labour governments. But to use a now favourite word in Labour’s lexicon ‘change’, without that construction, disarticulation and reworking, no new consensus will be established. What a waste.  

Following the 1979 General Election, in his essay ‘Thatcherism: The Impasse Broken?’ the editor of Marxism Today, Martin Jacques, mapped out why the Thatcherite hegemony was as much a product of a crisis of what the 1945 Labour vision, ‘Now Win the Peace’,  had turned into, as a victory of the right. In it, Jacques wrote:

“The precise character of Thatcherism is complex. Two clear elements, however, can be pinpointed. Firstly, there is a strong emphasis on a more traditional arguably petty-bourgeois ideology – the virtues of the market, competition, elitism, individual initiative, the iniquities of state intervention and bureaucracy… Secondly, Thatcherism has successfully attempted the organise the diverse forces of the ‘backlash’ – reacting against trade union militancy, national aspirations, permissiveness, women’s liberation – in favour of an essentially regressive and conservative solution embracing such themes as authority, law and order, patriotism, national unity, the family and individual freedom…

Thatcherism thus combines a right laissez-faire economic strategy with reactionary and authoritarian populism.”

Jacques described this shift as from a project of transformation to an ever-increasing emphasis on modernisation, sounds still familiar? The newly elected Labour leader, Harold Wilson had prefaced this change in his speech to the 1963 Labour conference: 

“In all our plans for the future, we are re-defining and we are re-stating our socialism in terms of the scientific revolution. But that revolution cannot become a reality unless we are prepared to make far-reaching changes in economic and social attitudes which permeate our whole system of society. The Britain that is going to be forged in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry.”

Jacques set out what this produced in turn:

” The strategy of modernisation it sought to carry through – aimed at a major transformation of the economy and society – proved not only completely inadequate relative to the nature and scope of the problem but, crucially, it also involved a new kind of attack on the position of the unions and, more widely, the working class, that is on its own social base.”

The effect wasn’t immediate; Labour’s 1945 election-winning vote share of 47.8% was still as high as 47.9% when Harold Wilson won in 1966, an impressive holding of the electoral ground. But after that the decline was non-stop, coming to a shuddering halt on 36.9% in 1979 (note Starmer’s ‘landslide’ was an even lower Labour share of the vote,  33.7%.) Likewise, Labour membership reached a post-war high of 908,000 in 1950 but after 1964 fell every year to 676,000 in 1978. The current 2025 figure is under half that, 333,235.

The reason for the decline and Labour’s defeat in 1979?  Jacques argued:

“Labour has become identified with the increasing use of the state in an administrative, impersonal, bureaucratic and even authoritarian manner.” 

He described the implications as ‘profound’:

“The Labour Party for many people, especially young people, is no longer seen as an effective oppositional, anti-establishment force; on the contrary, for many it has become an establishment party, partially incorporated into the state structures….

… Inevitably, this has undermined the position of the Labour Party as a party, rooted in society, enjoying a popular activist base, and committed to reforming society.”

The post-war consensus which Labour had founded in 1945, followed by Labour’s 1960s flirtation with a technocratic modernism, was ignominiously ended by the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent. An outpouring of angry strike action as layer after layer of low-paid workers resisted the poverty imposed on them by Labour’s state-sanctioned programme of wage restraint. Be careful what you wish for?

Sure, but own a crisis that was every bit Labour’s making as Thatcher’s windfall. Statism that was once the glorious shock of the 1945 new replaced by an alien, bureaucratic, inefficient state that was no match for the right to buy your own home, become a shareholder in an unfettered public utility, bring bright, shiny, new management practices to a failing NHS. This was modernisation, and then some. To which Labour had no effective answer because it had helped create the need for such drastic, if disastrous, action, in the first place. What a gift, the consequences we’ve been living with ever since. Time to wish Happy Birthday Maggie! Maggie! Maggie! With the inevitable Out! Out! Out!

Thatcher Centenary Steve Bell design is exclusive to Philosophy Football and available as a mug, tea towel, T-shirt and framed print from here. 

Mark Perryman’s new book The Starmer Symptom published by Pluto Press.