Andrew Rawnsley: David Cameron's ambivalent relationship with the lady in blue
[Andrew Rawnsley is the The Observer's award-winning Chief Political Commentator as well as being a best-selling author and critically-acclaimed broadcaster.]
David Cameron sometimes entertains visitors to Number 10 in a first-floor room which looks over Horse Guards towards St James's Park. For many years, it went by the bland name of the White Room; recently, it was retitled the Thatcher Room. A portrait of the blue lady has been hung on a wall. But you'd be wrong to think it was Mr C who decided to establish this memorial to Mrs T. He stresses it was not he who turned the room into a mini-shrine to the Iron Lady; it was his predecessor. And this is true: Gordon Brown had the room renamed in honour of the Conservative prime minister who pulverised the trade unions, privatised the industries, sold off council houses, squeezed the state and routed the Labour party. David Cameron is not entirely comfortable in her presence. He has been heard to say that he feels her eyes following him around the room.
There is a striking ambivalence in his attitude towards the most successful Conservative leader of modern times who came to power to confront challenges not altogether dissimilar to those which face him. So it is worth asking: to what extent is David Cameron a Thatcherite?
He is a child of Thatcherism. As a young man, he was an adviser to two ministers, Norman Lamont and Michael Howard, who were on the Thatcherite wing of his party. Those who knew him then took the young Cameron to be a disciple of the lady. He and George Osborne offer a version of her housewife homilies about debt to justify their approach to cutting the deficit. Their government is starting to unleash changes to public services, especially in education and health, which go much further than anything she ever attempted.
Yet there are other respects in which David Cameron is distinctly unThatcherite. Quite a lot of this is to do with personality. Cameron is a smooth old Etonian; Thatcher was a grammar school girl made from sandpaper. He says that the party he leads "is not the Conservative party of old" and he will never "vacate the centre ground". Thatcher was contemptuous of "the centre ground" and withering about consensus politics, holding it to be responsible for Britain's postwar decline and believing it to be a recipe for getting nothing done. Her natural mode was to be partisan. Where Cameron likes to say: "We're all in this together", she relished dividing the world into those who were "one of us" and those who were "one of them". As opposition to her and her measures became more intense, she responded not with emollience but with increased ferocity. She spoke of "enemies within" and adopted a rhetorical stridency that suggested she would not be content until all opposition was ground into dust.
By contrast, David Cameron is a much more naturally consensual personality. On the whole, he's the sort of person who would rather settle an argument than pick a fight. There was a conscious lack of triumphalism about last week's Tory conference. The word "Conservative" was conspicuous by being inconspicuous on the conference platform. The chosen slogan was: "Together in the national interest". Mr Cameron looks very comfortable at the head of a coalition in a way it is impossible to imagine Mrs Thatcher being.
George Osborne is more ideologically defined than his neighbour. But even as the chancellor foreshadowed a spending squeeze much more severe than anything ever attempted by the Iron Lady, he too tried to strike a tone which echoed more the tradition of one-nation Conservatism than the state-shrinking conviction of Thatcherism.
This contrast is also the product of the differing context in which today's Tories operate...
Read entire article at Observer (UK)
David Cameron sometimes entertains visitors to Number 10 in a first-floor room which looks over Horse Guards towards St James's Park. For many years, it went by the bland name of the White Room; recently, it was retitled the Thatcher Room. A portrait of the blue lady has been hung on a wall. But you'd be wrong to think it was Mr C who decided to establish this memorial to Mrs T. He stresses it was not he who turned the room into a mini-shrine to the Iron Lady; it was his predecessor. And this is true: Gordon Brown had the room renamed in honour of the Conservative prime minister who pulverised the trade unions, privatised the industries, sold off council houses, squeezed the state and routed the Labour party. David Cameron is not entirely comfortable in her presence. He has been heard to say that he feels her eyes following him around the room.
There is a striking ambivalence in his attitude towards the most successful Conservative leader of modern times who came to power to confront challenges not altogether dissimilar to those which face him. So it is worth asking: to what extent is David Cameron a Thatcherite?
He is a child of Thatcherism. As a young man, he was an adviser to two ministers, Norman Lamont and Michael Howard, who were on the Thatcherite wing of his party. Those who knew him then took the young Cameron to be a disciple of the lady. He and George Osborne offer a version of her housewife homilies about debt to justify their approach to cutting the deficit. Their government is starting to unleash changes to public services, especially in education and health, which go much further than anything she ever attempted.
Yet there are other respects in which David Cameron is distinctly unThatcherite. Quite a lot of this is to do with personality. Cameron is a smooth old Etonian; Thatcher was a grammar school girl made from sandpaper. He says that the party he leads "is not the Conservative party of old" and he will never "vacate the centre ground". Thatcher was contemptuous of "the centre ground" and withering about consensus politics, holding it to be responsible for Britain's postwar decline and believing it to be a recipe for getting nothing done. Her natural mode was to be partisan. Where Cameron likes to say: "We're all in this together", she relished dividing the world into those who were "one of us" and those who were "one of them". As opposition to her and her measures became more intense, she responded not with emollience but with increased ferocity. She spoke of "enemies within" and adopted a rhetorical stridency that suggested she would not be content until all opposition was ground into dust.
By contrast, David Cameron is a much more naturally consensual personality. On the whole, he's the sort of person who would rather settle an argument than pick a fight. There was a conscious lack of triumphalism about last week's Tory conference. The word "Conservative" was conspicuous by being inconspicuous on the conference platform. The chosen slogan was: "Together in the national interest". Mr Cameron looks very comfortable at the head of a coalition in a way it is impossible to imagine Mrs Thatcher being.
George Osborne is more ideologically defined than his neighbour. But even as the chancellor foreshadowed a spending squeeze much more severe than anything ever attempted by the Iron Lady, he too tried to strike a tone which echoed more the tradition of one-nation Conservatism than the state-shrinking conviction of Thatcherism.
This contrast is also the product of the differing context in which today's Tories operate...