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Apropos of sovereignty, Margaret Thatcher was a devout Unionist. Yet she signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement: another concession of sovereignty. Nor did she eradicate all aspects of national decline. There is no reason to suppose that the average child in a state school had a better education in 1990 than in 1979 and nothing was done to prevent the steady deterioration of the underclass.
This does not mean that we should reassess Margaret Thatcher’s claims to greatness. But the real record of the Thatcher years, as opposed to the epic myths, leads to one obvious conclusion: government is a desperately difficult business. ‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever made.’ Like everybody else, Tories know what they would wish to do in an ideal world. Tories also know that they will never live in one. They understand that the business of government is an unending dialectic between principles and circumstances. Liberals may dream their dreams, socialists may scheme their schemes. Tories always have work to do.
So how would Premier Cameron cope? He has many of the right qualities: physical and mental stamina, a good brain, decisiveness. He has more intellectual self-confidence than Mrs Thatcher had, and a clearer mind. He does share two other vital attributes with the Iron Lady. He is stubborn and he does not like losing. Like her, he would weigh up everything carefully before committing his troops to action. Like her, he would hate to sound the retreat.
There will be plenty of action. The new government will inherit an economic crisis requiring unprecedented measures. Previous governments were able to deal with their problems by restraining the growth of public expenditure.
The next one will have to impose large cuts. It seems improbable that the public sector unions will co-operate. Conflict is inevitable; courage will be mandatory.
Mr Cameron has already shown some courage; rather more, indeed, than Margaret Thatcher in her early phase. In 1979, just before the election, the Clegg Report recommended an absurdly high pay award for public sector workers. The nation could not afford it. The implementation of Clegg would exacerbate the difficulties of an already weak economy. But public sector workers have votes. Margaret Thatcher had an election to win. She accepted Clegg.
In contrast, David Cameron has proposed a pay freeze for all but the least well-paid public sector employees plus the withdrawal of some middle-class welfare benefits. He also did something which no previous opposition leader even considered. He opposed a tax cut which applied to everyone in the country: Labour’s one-year reduction in VAT. Although a lot more resolve will be needed before we are out of the mess, that is not a bad beginning.
A good prime minister deals with crises; a great one turns them into opportunities. David Cameron plans to use this public-spending crisis to achieve a goal that has eluded all his recent predecessors, including Margaret Thatcher. He intends to ensure that public servants actually serve the public. He is also determined to deal with social decay. We could argue over the semantics of ‘broken society’. But it would require a high degree of insensitivity to claim that a country with such a large underclass has a whole society.
Events will force a challenging agenda on David Cameron. His own moral commitment to repairing social breakdown will make it more challenging still. There can be no guarantee of success. But all those who are not in the grip of hysterical resentment should acknowledge that this is a serious man for serious purposes.
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