Martin Kettle: What Harold Macmillan could teach David Cameron
[Martin Kettle is an associate editor of the Guardian.]
It must be a close-run thing whether David Cameron retains a distinct political memory of Harold Macmillan. The prime minister was an undergraduate when his veteran predecessor died 24 years ago this week at the age of 92. More pertinently, Cameron was only 13 when, in the summer of 1980, the long retired Macmillan – Conservative prime minister from 1957-63 – sent the remarkable 11-page private warning to Margaret Thatcher about her economic strategy which emerged out of the National Archives yesterday under the 30-year rule.
Anyone who can write so coherently about economic policy at the age of 86, as Macmillan does in his memorandum, deserves respect. He starts with an incisive summary of global economic imbalances and the dangers of recession, goes on to warn about the international banking system, expresses concern about low global demand, and calls for "not restriction and deflation, but powerful reflationary measures largely on capital account throughout all the countries of the west". Sounds familiar? The author of this part of the memorandum could just as easily be Gordon Brown as Macmillan.
In other places, the memo undoubtedly shows its age. Its main domestic concerns are high inflation, low productivity and steep interest rates that "in any other age" would have been regarded as "sheer usury". It contains a passionate lament about the refusal of the trade unions to reform. Money supply, totemic to Thatcher, is dismissed as a speedometer-style indicator that tells you a vehicle's speed but which cannot make it go faster or slower. As such, therefore, Macmillan's memorandum also reflects the distinct features of the economic crisis of 1980 as opposed to those of today...
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It must be a close-run thing whether David Cameron retains a distinct political memory of Harold Macmillan. The prime minister was an undergraduate when his veteran predecessor died 24 years ago this week at the age of 92. More pertinently, Cameron was only 13 when, in the summer of 1980, the long retired Macmillan – Conservative prime minister from 1957-63 – sent the remarkable 11-page private warning to Margaret Thatcher about her economic strategy which emerged out of the National Archives yesterday under the 30-year rule.
Anyone who can write so coherently about economic policy at the age of 86, as Macmillan does in his memorandum, deserves respect. He starts with an incisive summary of global economic imbalances and the dangers of recession, goes on to warn about the international banking system, expresses concern about low global demand, and calls for "not restriction and deflation, but powerful reflationary measures largely on capital account throughout all the countries of the west". Sounds familiar? The author of this part of the memorandum could just as easily be Gordon Brown as Macmillan.
In other places, the memo undoubtedly shows its age. Its main domestic concerns are high inflation, low productivity and steep interest rates that "in any other age" would have been regarded as "sheer usury". It contains a passionate lament about the refusal of the trade unions to reform. Money supply, totemic to Thatcher, is dismissed as a speedometer-style indicator that tells you a vehicle's speed but which cannot make it go faster or slower. As such, therefore, Macmillan's memorandum also reflects the distinct features of the economic crisis of 1980 as opposed to those of today...