A Reader's Guide to Thatcherism

January/February 2010

In What a Carve Up!, Coe has Thomas Winshaw, the banker of the family, gazing at a City dealing floor:

Watching his foreign exchange dealers as they stared feverishly at their flickering screens, Thomas came as close as he would ever come to feeling parental love. They were the sons he had never had. This was the happiest time of his life, the early to mid 1980s when Mrs Thatcher had transformed the image of currency speculator into national heroes by describing them as "wealth creators", alchemists who could conjure unimaginable fortunes out of thin air. The fact that these fortunes went straight into their own pockets or those of their employees was quietly overlooked.

When Coe published in 1993, the critics admired his novel but treated it as an enjoyably outrageous exercise in satirical excess. I doubt they would today.

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Anonymous

December 22nd, 2009
6:12 PM

The reason the Left will fail at the election is mentioned in this article but not given enough weight. It is the contempt with which the Left holds the general electorate. They see them as venal, corrupt, grabbing, selfish and utterly not to be trusted. They need an enlightened elite to instruct and yes, force, them to see the error of their ways. This elitism and refusal to persuade is the rotten heart of the Left. If the Left ever got its act together and realised there was no short-cut to democracy, it might be unstoppable. Then again, as I have learned and it led to my disillusionment with the Left, they may also find that the reason the Left finds itself eternally drawn to coercion is because the general population think it is better equipped to make decisions about their lives than the Left is. Sadly Partha, above, exemplifies this addiction to thinking the population stupid.

Partha

December 22nd, 2009
2:12 PM

The embourgeoisment of our society has (while having MANY merits) produced a hubristic class of consumers who deludedly conflate themselves with their betters rather than lessers. One hundred years ago, a worker could have looked at a plutocrat, his cleanliness, his attire (the fact his clothes were not torn, that he wore shoes etc), his accent and concluded that he was almost of a different breed. But today's super rich paint themselves as, "y'know, regular guys", they drop their Ts and Hs, most of us in Britain can afford to not have to walk in rags without shoes. As a result, many ordinary folk find it easier to form the impression that they themselves will probably join the ranks of the fabulous one day. This is compounded by the fact that the media they watch/listen to is essentially one big lottery advert. Which makes for an ignorant populace. The truth is that the middle-class are just as invested in the nation's well-being as the working class. They need to be told "YOU'RE ALL MEMBERS OF THE THIRD ESTATE! SO WIPE THAT SUPERCILIOUS SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE!(and get rid of that credit card. It's turning you into a tosspot with an inflated sense of entitlement) Says I.

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