Editorial PULL the other one - it's got bells on! Who believes Tory government ministers any more? Even those who swallowed Thatcher's fanciful line on the sinking of the Belgrano have balked at her obvious lying over the Westland saga, the sudden embarrassing revelation of plans to flog off BL truck and bus, Land Rover and even Austin Rover cars production, and the latest pathetic attempt to fiddle the unemployment figures downwards by another 55,000.
Ministerial statements have begun to carry as much credibility as a Philippines election. And Thatcher herself seems to have embarked upon a deliberate course of antagonising as many sections of her former supporters as possible prior to the next election. The insults and attacks have come increasingly thick and fast:
• Norman Fowler's social security plans will leave almost every person in the country worse off;
• Students have been hit by new DHSS regulations;
• The elderly and claimants have been denied extra heating allowances in the second coldest February. this century;
• Pensioners have been insulted by a miserable 40p increase that will not buy a loaf of bread;
• Child allowance has been raised by only 10p -leaving it way below its level two years ago;
• 400,000 teachers have been ignored in their long-running if half-cock campaign over pay; 500,000 nurses and another 600,000 health workers have been warned that any real pay increase this year would mean even more NHS cuts;
• The new planned poll tax to replace rates will fall heaviest on the worse off and offer a bonanza cut in rates for businesses and the stinking rich;
• The proposed sale of BL to "foreign" bidders has raised nationalist hackles inside as well as outside the Tory Party - over and above the scandal of the asset-stripping exercise that would inevitably follow.
So how does Thatcher plan to fight and win another election? Though profits are still rising, the pound strong, and the Stock Market is running riot with takeover fever, the prospects are of little change in the record levels of unemployment.
Having failed to deliver the promised economic goods, Thatcher, like any shady street trader seeing an enraged punter returning to demand a refund. must work on the basis of take the money and run.*
Hence the haste to complete a range of projects including hell-for-leather privatisation of even more lucrative assets, further steps to demolish the welfare state, signing the commitment to the Channel Tunnel, and handing out more tax cuts.
But Thatcher has not entirely lost hope. Her trump card, despite the obvious and growing unpopularity of her government, is the emergence of the Alliance as a lever to split the former Labour vote and prevent a clear electoral showdown. And the Joker in the
HeaL pack is the weakness of the Kinnock leadership, which has above all set itself the task of ditching Labour's policies, witch-hunting and expelling the left, and moving closer to the SP programme.
A combination of a split anti-Tory vote, an unconvincing Labour "alternative" based on the old, discredited formulae, and a vicious, swash-buckling, red-baiting "law and order" election campaign in the style of Tebbit and Archer might yet offer Thatcher the chance of a third term. Clearly some Tories quail at this prospect: many fear for their own seats. Hence the succession of timid "revolts" by handfuls of backbench dissidents.
But the Tory "wets" face an acute crisis of leadership: none has emerged with a coherent alternative to Thatcher or the backbone to mount a serious challenge in what remains the most undemocratic of parties.
Strangely enough, a similar weakness confronts Labour's beleaguered hard left. All agree that Kinnock is leading the way to what would at best be a grotesque re-run of the failed policies of the 1964 and 1974 Labour governments. All agree that his witch-hunt must be opposed. Yet none of the hard left MPs has shown a willingness to challenge Kinnock/Hattersley for the leadership: and few outside the Parliamentary Labour Party have even suggested that they should. Kinnock has not been slow to exploit this weakness, increasingly compounded with pre-election "unity" fever.
Could it be, however, that the hard left are playing a shrewd tactical game, simply biding their time for the right moment to mount their challenge to Kinnock, some time after the next election?
Pull the other one, comrade, it's got bells on! Socialist Viewpoint No. 11 March 1986 pl