One Margaret Thatcher was quite enough thanks, Labour - Vladimir McTavish
Ever since they were elected in July of last year, the current UK government has been accused of talking like Labour in opposition but turning into Conservatives once in office.
It has happened before. The same criticism was made of Tony Blair in the late nineties. Although, it did take his cabinet much longer than Starmer’s to morph into Tories. And I don’t remember any of them ever directly quoting Margaret Thatcher.
Yet this is what we heard this week, when Health Secretary Wes Streeting called resident doctors and the BMA “moaning minnies” over their current pay dispute.
This is exactly the phrase that the Iron Lady would trot out on a regular basis to describe anyone who did not share her world view, and that was an awful lot of people.
There were a lot of us moaning minnies around in the eighties. We comprised most of the North of England, every coal miner, a significant number of the population of Northern Ireland and the virtual entirety of both Scotland and Wales. Not to mention 100 per cent of Argentina.
It is a brave or foolhardy Labour politician who quotes any former Tory PM, let alone Thatcher. What are we to expect next? Will we have Rachel Reeves declaring that “this lady’s not for turning”? I wouldn’t be at all surprised. I have always thought the Chancellor styles herself like some modern-day Iron Lady.
This is a very slippery slope indeed. Do we really want Starmer and Co reprising the rest of Maggie’s back catalogue. Thatcher once famously claimed that “If you set out to be liked, you will accomplish nothing.” She then spent eleven years accomplishing a lot, and was widely loathed for all she did.
The Evil Witch Of Grantham said many things during her time in office, such as “There is no such thing as society” which she used to justify the selfish state she sought to achieve in Britain. Yet I can only recall her ever making one joke.
She once said “Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous. You eventually get knocked down by traffic from both sides”. Good advice for our current PM. After his 18 months of shilly-shallying, those are words Keir Starmer would do well to heed. And his moaning minnie Health Secretary.