VERSION|0.5.1|NAME|Steve|DATE|1365510868|CONTENT|Every now and again the accepted consensus of British politics has to change. Any system that lasts for a long time will eventually become corrupted through misuse, as self-interested players learn how to manipulate it for their own ends. There was nothing inherently wrong with the Post-War Consensus, it worked fine for 25 years. What destroyed it was the terrible abuse it got from the trades unions, exploiting it to purely self-driven ends. The post-Thatcher consensus (privatised, deregulated, market-based) kicked the chair out from under the unions, and it was fine for a while. But it has been destroyed by the banks, also for purely self-driven ends. A new consensus is required, one that uses markets where they are appropriate, but that isn’t scared to intervene when it is necessary, and that isn’t scared to have structured policies for industry. I don’t see where it is coming from. It worries me that in Cameron and Milliband we have the 21st Century equivalent of Wilson and Heath, tinkering with a broken model because they don’t have the balls to do anything about it.

Thatcher (properly she only has one name) represented the necessary shift away from the failed consensus. Today’s politicians won’t move an inch away from the opinion polls, which means not moving far from the status quo. Someone needs to stand up against the status quo, risking becoming a hate figure like Thatcher was (although the hate will come from the commuter villages of Surrey rather than the mining villages of Durham).

Also, music will get better. I still get a shiver listening to Billy Bragg or Matt Johnson. They should play it at her funeral. Here comes another winter of long shadows and high, high hopes. Here comes another winter waiting for Utopia, waiting for hell to freeze over. |IP-ADDRESS|10.0.119.138, 217.36.222.79, 10.37.43.203|MODERATIONFLAG|