Burnham and Thatcher: the triumph of a teenage vibe

The average age of a Labour Party member is in their mid-fifties, Burnham speaks directly to their deeply held teenage belief in the Thatcher Myth

“Britain’s incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham used his first speech as Labour leader Friday to condemn the economic model established in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher and promise greater public control of essential services, signaling a shift to the left from outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Burnham, who will formally become prime minister Monday, said that Britain had taken “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s,” when political power was centralized and economic power was transferred to private companies.”

One of the consistent things about GenX left-wingers is the extent to which Margaret Thatcher, or rather a Mythic Maggie quite distinct from the actual person, occupies their mind. I remember, when Margaret Thatcher died, the beer writer and successful ad man, Pete Brown wrote two thousand sad words about how much he hated Thatcher because everyone like him from Barnsley hates Thatcher. This despite the freewheeling legacy of the Thatcher years lying behind the achievements of British advertising agencies, the very thing that gave Brown his early financial success. Less biting the hard that feeds and more chewing its arm off at the elbow.

Andy Burnham is typical of these, middle class (usually but not always with exaggerated claims to being working class) and educated left wing 50-somethings. It’s true that the 1980s miners’ strike, a folk memory of Militant Labour and Neil Kinnock’s 1985 speech are factors in the embedding of 1980s mythology in the minds of that decade’s teenagers. But I suspect that a much bigger influence on the politics of those bright teenagers from Labour voting families was ‘Saturday Live’ (and its successor, ‘Friday Night Live’). The show featured popular, and often very funny ‘alternative’ comedy including greats like Harry Enfield, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Tracy Ullman. All hosted of course by writer, stand up comedian and full time lefty, Ben Elton. It was Elton’s ‘a little bit of politics’ with its focus on ‘Mrs Thatch’ or later just ‘Thatch’ that created the earliest versions of Margaret Thatcher as an evil hag: a characterisation that dominates less informed left and right wing opinion of her and her policies.

“The Irish death goddess, Morrigan, is usually portrayed either as a hag or else as a glorious queen of battle. This reflects her two domains, albeit that death and battle are inevitably closely entwined. For some Morrigan is beautiful, dangerous and magnificent, the Queen of Battles, while for others she is evil, bitter and hateful, a Night Hag. These two images capture beautifully the responses to the Japanese ambassador. And reminds us that even now, over 35 years since she left office, the mere mention of Margaret Thatcher elicits such strong feelings, often from people too young to have experienced her period as prime minister. It is, however, the Mythic Maggie - either night hag or battle queen - that people address, not the real Margaret Thatcher.”

We listen to these myths when Burnham talks about ‘trickle down economics’, ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘privatisation’ while painting mythical pictures of working class communities under the domination of trade union bosses. Burnham shares with the populist right a rose-tinted vision of an imaginary past when sturdy men from Lowry paintings walked to work in great factories where we made things. In this fairy story the unions weren’t thuggish men who enforced closed shops and used coercion, violence even, to control the communities of those mills, mines and factories but sainted leaders who held rapacious bosses in check. Burnham shares with people like J D Vance the idea that something called ‘neoliberalism’ and its planned ‘deindustrialisation’ took away this happy world replacing it with a ‘dog eat dog’ world filled with people apeing Harry Enfield’s most famous character by talking about how they’ve ‘loadsamoney’.

This is the world of ‘Other People’s Money’ where uncaring men in broad red braces with big city offices arrived in towns that ‘made things’ to close down and asset strip the traditions of industry. This terrible ‘neoliberalism’ was for Burnham and other 1980s teenagers simply all Thatcher’s fault: she did it, their vibe tells them, out of simple spite and hatred for the traditions of the working class. Burnham’s claim that under Thatcher “economic power was transferred to private companies” isn’t a considered assessment based on economic history but a statement of faith. Men like Burnham ‘remember’ in the way of fourteen and fifteen year olds everywhere, it’s all mixed up with clothes, music, boys and girls but they definitely ‘remember’ how terrible it was and how it was ‘All Thatcher’s Fault’.

Yesterday I stubbed my toe

All because of that so and so

And today some fucking brat

Had the nerve to call me fat

And I’m very inclined to say

I guess you could say

That it’s all Maggie Thatcher’s fault

The average age of a Labour Party member is in their mid-fifties, Burnham speaks directly to their deeply held teenage belief in the Thatcher Myth in a way that Starmer, a child of the 70s couldn’t. The conservative right in Britain has long been accused of living off the ‘Maggie Myth’ but we don’t always appreciate that the reverse of that myth is one of the most powerful forces in the Labour Party too. Ben Elton once refused lunch with Margaret Thatcher because he feared that he might find he quite liked her and this would spoil the vibe of his stand up. That vibe remains with us today and is manifest in the person of our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham.