Gaffe or Truth ?
One of the more unfortunate consequences of adversarial politics is that when a politician is brave enough to say something true, especially if it is also politically inconvenient, there is a good chance that everyone in the media and other parties will start shouting “Gaffe!” and implying that the person who told the truth was stupid. The great cartoonist HM Bateman used to draw pictures showing everyone in a large room staring in fury or delight at an embarrased person who has just made a humiliating mistake. These cartoons had titles like "The diplomat who said that his country would pay" and "The subaltern who took the Colonel's biscuit." To the best of my knowledge he never did one called "The MP who told the truth!" but the way some people think he certainly could have.
So I would like to salute a Labour MP, Gisela Stuart, for telling the truth about a number of issues on which the official propaganda machine of her party has been putting out a narrative consisting of lie after lie after lie.
First, she is absolutely right that in the 1970’s Britain was in “a serious mess after following mistaken policies for two or three decades.” As a boy at the time, my earliest political memories come from this period, and I can remember the power cuts and other signs of economic decline which Ms. Stuart writes about. As she said, "Relative decline was followed by absolute decline. Much of our industry was clapped out; much of our management was in the dark ages; the militant trade union movement was rampant."
The climax of this problem was made clear in the “winter of discontent” when one trade union leader referred to the consequences of strike action with the words “If someone dies, so be it.” I remember this all too clearly because my father was one of those he was talking about. Dad was rung up on the morning he was due to go into Guy’s hospital for a heart operation which doctors regarded as essential, and told that his operation was cancelled because Shop Stewards from one of the NHS trade unions had decided it wasn’t an emergency.
Second, Gisela Stuart is right to give much of the credit for turning this situation around to Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe. She recalls the moment when 364 economists wrote to the newspapers saying that the policies of the Conservative government “would end in disaster” and adds “They were wrong.”
This may seem to many people like ancient history. But there is an old saying that those who do not study the mistakes of the past are more likely to repeat them. And Gisela Stuart is right a third time when she says that
“In Britain, there is complacency owing to recent relative economic success, but it is possible that the seeds of future stagnation have been sown. We have excessive public spending, rising taxes and excessive micro-management.”
Needless to say this has been presented in some of the media as part of the war between Blair and Brown, but that isn’t the most important issue. The key question is whether her arguments are right – and I believe that Gordon Brown is in danger of falling into the very pitfalls she points out.
Finally, she was also right to warn of the danger that a legitimate desire both to protect jobs in our own country, and also to help the poorest people in the third world, must not lead us to listen to the siren voices of calls for what is referred to as “fair trade” but is really disguised protectionism. As she says, “Globalisation is not a threat, but an opportunity, and we should embrace it and see liberal markets as the most effective instrument for generating prosperity here in the United Kingdom, in Germany and the rest of Europe.”
Gaffe ? Well it certainly isn’t convenient for those in the Labour propaganda machine, who have sought to spread the lies that the last Conservative government was an economic disaster and everything Gordon Brown does is perfect, to have one of their own MPs recognise that much of today’s prosperity comes from things the last Conservative government got right. Or that some of Brown’s policies are a threat to that prosperity. One newspaper, while agreeing with much of what Gisela Stuart said, called her a “cuckoo” in the labour nest. But we will do better as a country if politicians can tell the inconvenient truth without getting clobbered for it.
So I would like to salute a Labour MP, Gisela Stuart, for telling the truth about a number of issues on which the official propaganda machine of her party has been putting out a narrative consisting of lie after lie after lie.
First, she is absolutely right that in the 1970’s Britain was in “a serious mess after following mistaken policies for two or three decades.” As a boy at the time, my earliest political memories come from this period, and I can remember the power cuts and other signs of economic decline which Ms. Stuart writes about. As she said, "Relative decline was followed by absolute decline. Much of our industry was clapped out; much of our management was in the dark ages; the militant trade union movement was rampant."
The climax of this problem was made clear in the “winter of discontent” when one trade union leader referred to the consequences of strike action with the words “If someone dies, so be it.” I remember this all too clearly because my father was one of those he was talking about. Dad was rung up on the morning he was due to go into Guy’s hospital for a heart operation which doctors regarded as essential, and told that his operation was cancelled because Shop Stewards from one of the NHS trade unions had decided it wasn’t an emergency.
Second, Gisela Stuart is right to give much of the credit for turning this situation around to Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe. She recalls the moment when 364 economists wrote to the newspapers saying that the policies of the Conservative government “would end in disaster” and adds “They were wrong.”
This may seem to many people like ancient history. But there is an old saying that those who do not study the mistakes of the past are more likely to repeat them. And Gisela Stuart is right a third time when she says that
“In Britain, there is complacency owing to recent relative economic success, but it is possible that the seeds of future stagnation have been sown. We have excessive public spending, rising taxes and excessive micro-management.”
Needless to say this has been presented in some of the media as part of the war between Blair and Brown, but that isn’t the most important issue. The key question is whether her arguments are right – and I believe that Gordon Brown is in danger of falling into the very pitfalls she points out.
Finally, she was also right to warn of the danger that a legitimate desire both to protect jobs in our own country, and also to help the poorest people in the third world, must not lead us to listen to the siren voices of calls for what is referred to as “fair trade” but is really disguised protectionism. As she says, “Globalisation is not a threat, but an opportunity, and we should embrace it and see liberal markets as the most effective instrument for generating prosperity here in the United Kingdom, in Germany and the rest of Europe.”
Gaffe ? Well it certainly isn’t convenient for those in the Labour propaganda machine, who have sought to spread the lies that the last Conservative government was an economic disaster and everything Gordon Brown does is perfect, to have one of their own MPs recognise that much of today’s prosperity comes from things the last Conservative government got right. Or that some of Brown’s policies are a threat to that prosperity. One newspaper, while agreeing with much of what Gisela Stuart said, called her a “cuckoo” in the labour nest. But we will do better as a country if politicians can tell the inconvenient truth without getting clobbered for it.
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