The red thread between Truss’s resignations and Thatcher’s
Truss is the latest victim of the Tory civil war, which began with Thatcher's resignation. The point of Daniele Meloni
The resignation of Liz Truss comes from afar. Far away. London, 28 November 1990. British citizens watch with bewilderment as Margaret Thatcher comes out of Downing Street with tears in her eyes and announces her resignation to the nation. It is the first civil war of the Tories, which has the Iron Lady as its victim. The Tory deputies and the most senior ministers of her government invited her to step aside: for them she lost Middle England with the unfortunate poll tax , the capital tax that weighed on all British (and Welsh) in spite of income. Deep divisions also over the country's role in Europe determine the farewell of the Iron Lady. From that sunny but cold autumn afternoon the Tories will have no more peace. They will elect a centrist candidate, John Major, in place of Maggie, but the scandals, the harsh confrontation between Eurorealists and Eurosceptics over the Maastricht Treaty and the Black Wednesday in which the pound exited the EMS led to the resounding thud of the 1997 elections.
Even the years of opposition did not smooth out the differences. William Hague, Thatcher's dolphin, fought a battle against the introduction of the euro at the pace of “keep the pound” , let's keep the pound. He won it but it wasn't enough to get the Tories back to Downing Street. In 2001 the party chose the Tory One Nation Eurosceptic Iain Duncan Smith in place of the Eurorealist Ken Clarke and after him another hard right exponent, Michael Howard, without however being able to undermine the consensus of Tony Blair and New Labor .
With Cameron's election, things seemed to change. The Tories had relied on their Blair: centrist, liberal on major social issues, young and charismatic. Except that the country had changed and after the financial crisis of 2008-2009 Cameron goes to the government with the LibDems and has to propose a recipe for austerity : the post-Thatcher right presses him, the European Research Group (ERG) – very powerful caucus to inside the party – expects to promise a referendum inside or outside on Brussels and when the Premier brings the law on same-sex marriages to the courtroom, over 100 deputies of his party rebel. The rise in support of Nigel Farage's Ukip to the right of the Tories sends the Conservatives into panic. We arrive at the internal showdown – yet another – the Brexit referendum: Boris Johnson chooses Leave to oust his rival from Downing Street. The United Kingdom leaves the European Union.
After ousting May, Johnson is faced with a dilemma: how to keep together the party and the new constituencies won by the Tories in the 2017 and, above all, 2019 elections? The Conservatives break through in the north-east of the country, in the posts of post-industrial England held by Labor for over 100 years. Those who want liberalization policies and tax cuts are disappointed when Johnson in his electoral program announces the "leveling up" – literally "rebalancing upward" – a huge public investment plan in the most disadvantaged areas of the country.
But Johnson's new coalition of Tory voters is just an election cartel. In Parliament, the Prime Minister is unable to summarize the Thatcherians who wanted him to be leaders, the centrists who consider him unsuitable for public office, and the new deputies elected in the former Labor Red Wall of working class extraction. The partygate arrives and the party, instead of making a square around the Premier, rides it. Johnson will be fined £ 50 for his participation in Downing Street drinks and after some scandals in the party will be forced to resign.
Last summer's leadership contest brought out the deep divisions within the party: on the one hand, the Thatcherites of the ERG, who choose Liz Truss as their standard bearer. On the other hand, the moderate Tories who are focusing on Johnson's former Chancellor, the Anglo-Indian billionaire Rishi Sunak, for a budgetary policy marked by responsibility and proactive. In a strange game of parts, the former Remainer Truss is the darling of the brexiteers , while the Leaver Sunak becomes the point of reference for the anti-Johnsonians and centrists. Strange politics, right?
The rest is recent history. Truss deals a near-fatal blow to Thatcherism and ERG. The centrists with Hunt and Shapps take the reins of the party, divided over everything. There is talk of a return of Johnson, loved by the base and by the financiers of the Tories, but on which the sword of Damocles weighs in a parliamentary investigation by the Privileges Committee of the House of Commons to ascertain whether or not he has "misled" the Parliament on the partygate . Sunak sees the Downing Street gate getting closer and closer. The financial markets would like him, but among the Tories there are those who do not forget the stab at Johnson and a video in which the former Chancellor said he wanted to redistribute the money in the traditional strongholds of the party in the south and in the south-east instead. than in the north. Perhaps the third wheel will prevail. But who will be able to stop yet another Tory civil war that threatens to destroy the party forever?
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/dimissioni-truss-thatcher/ on Fri, 21 Oct 2022 09:41:15 +0000.