30/3 Brexit The Aftermath | Thatcher Refeudalisation.pdf
Conclusion
1. Happenstance led to a Neoliberal think tank influence over Thatcher and on becoming PM there was policy conflict with the Ordoliberal EU
2. Domestically Thatcher meant a Habermasian refeudalisation with a socioeconomic redistribution of wealth upwards creating friction
3. These problems were ascribed to Brussels and to the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties EU further promoting a heightened Brexit tendency
4. The Anglo Saxon English preference for the ‘practical’ rather than the ‘intellectual’ meant a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation
AR Research and Opinion
Discussion
Margaret Thatcher 1925 – 2013 was Leader of the Conservative Party 1975 – 1990 and PM 1979 – 1990 reading chemistry at Somerville College Oxford, which meant three years study and one year research on the structure of an antibiotic molecule by X ray crystallography. She was influenced by von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom 1944 and became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association 1946. She qualified as a barrister specialising in taxation, becoming an MP in the 1959 General Election and entering the IEA orbit in the early 1960s: meaning opposition to the Attlee/Beveridge Welfare State and Keynesianism with a promotion of von Hayek’s Neoliberalism. The issue of the right of sitting tenants to buy their council housing on favourable terms, the privatisation of social housing, was an early piece of Thatcher Cabinet legislation: The Housing Act 1980. It epitomised the neoliberal marketisation argument without concern for the long term socioeconomic consequences ‘après nous le déluge’: its peculiar short termism. The Miners’ Strike 1984 – 1985 was a major neoliberal victory for the Thatcher Cabinet in a marked reversal of the Heath Cabinet Three Day Week experience 1974. The ensuing Major Cabinet difficulties with the ERM I 1992 were essentially the Tory Party UK stuck between its Neoliberal shibboleths and EU Ordoliberalism. The ensuing Labour Party Blair Cabinet was US centric and soft neoliberal with the succeeding indifferent Brown Cabinet yielding to the Tory Cameron Cabinet of neoliberal austerianism and nil political nous. The result was the Brexit Referendum 2016 as an attempt to close off the EU question and counter the Farage UK Independence Party UKIP only to produce Brexit 2020 under a string of incompetent Conservative PMs: May endeavouring the impossibility of (i) Great Britain being out of the Single Market, (ii) N Ireland being in the Single Market and (iii) no Customs Border existing between Great Britain and N Ireland only to be followed by the even more challenged Johnson, Truss and Sunak. However, all the time there has been the drumbeat of refeudalisation as the Thatcherite framework of reliance on think tanks for Conservative Party policy formulation does its work. Scotland, Wales and N Ireland are naturally tending to distance themselves from the English chaos.
AR Research and Opinion
Chronology
1944 |
Von Hayek publishes The Road to Serfdom marking his shift to libertarian polemics and later to Chicago School Neoliberalism probably originating from Vögelin’s influence |
1948 |
National Health Service NHS launched under the Attlee Labour Party Cabinet on the Beveridge Report recommendation 1942: it quickly became a left/right political football |
1959 |
Macmillan replaced Eden as PM 1957 on the Suez Crisis 1956 and he called and won the election on the slogan ‘You’ve never had it so good’ given the economic upturn |
1974 |
Coal miner strikes meant electricity shortages and commercial users were restricted to three days a week: a general election called by Heath was effectively lost to Wilson |
1984/85 |
Colliery closures by the National Coal Board were opposed by the National Union of Mineworkers and violence between the police and aggressive flying pickets was notable |
1992 (i) |
Maastricht Treaty to continue ‘an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe with decisions taken as closely as possible to the citizens on the principle of subsidiarity’ |
1992 (ii) |
The Exchange Rate Mechanism ERM I of narrowing exchange rate bands leading to European Monetary Union EMU had an overvalued GBP falling out quite spectacularly |
2007 |
Lisbon Treaty on European Union Article 3 (3) has the Union shall establish an internal or single market based on a competitive social market economy with sustainability |
2016 |
The Referendum decides for Brexit 51.9% vs 48.1%, replacement PM May states contradictory Irish Border red lines, but gives the Article 50 Notice of Withdrawal March 2017 |
2020 |
TCA agreed giving the EU its complex tiered regulatory liaison framework to protect the Single Market Acquis and the UK its quixotic sovereignty vis à vis the totemic ECJ |
AR Research and Opinion
Glossary
Austerianism |
Extreme fiscal conservatism and its followers |
Originating in 1930s US politics later entering into Keynes vs von Hayek, ‘liberalism’ vs ‘libertarianism’ etc issues |
Council Housing |
Social housing financed and built by councils |
The new London County Council chooses the Boundary Estate as a slum clearance scheme under the 1885 Act |
Four Freedoms |
Of capital, goods, labour, services movement |
To promote a fully competitive Single Market there must be regulatory integration and also freedom of movement |
IEA |
Institute for Economic Affairs A major think tank |
On the advice of von Hayek to work via think tanks and not politics, Sir Anthony Fisher launched the IEA in 1955 |
Keynesianism |
The macroeconomics of Keynes 1883 – 1946 |
Unemployment given a situation of inadequate aggregate demand requires a public debt financed macro stimulus |
Neoliberalism |
An alleged renewal of laissez faire Liberalism |
Freiburg, Austrian and Chicago School from social market Ordoliberalism to Refeudalisation: now meaning Chicago |
Ordoliberalism |
Walter Eucken Institut founded in Freiburg 1954 |
Its Wirtschaftsverfassung Economic Constitution principle ordering markets is the EU's socioeconomics concept |
Refeudalisation |
Refeudalisierung/New Feudalism Of Habermas |
Suppression of enlightenment humanist values and the radical privatisation of public space, goods and services |
Single Market |
Regulatory integration Four Freedoms market |
To promote competition for a higher consumer welfare and to eliminate rents there is a total regulatory integration |
Welfare State |
‘Social Insurance and Allied Services’ 1942 |
The Beveridge Report establishes the post War welfare state in the UK with the NHS launched by Bevan 1948 |
AR Research and Opinion