Thatcher and Sons
A Revolution in Three Acts
Penguin
Paperback
: 06 Sep 2007
£9.99
£7.99
Synopsis
The history of Britain in the last thirty years, under both Conservative and Labour governments, has been dominated by one figure – Margaret Thatcher. Her election marked a decisive break with the past and her premiership transformed not just her country, but the nature of democratic leadership.
Simon Jenkins analyses this revolution from its beginnings in the turmoil of the 1970s through the social and economic changes of the 1980s. Was Thatcherism a mere medicine for an ailing economy or a complete political philosophy? And did it eventually fall victim to the dogmatism and control which made it possible?
This is the story of the events, personalities, defeats and victories which will be familiar to all those who lived through them, but seen through a new lens. It is also an argument about how Thatcher’s legacy has continued down to the present. Not just John Major, but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are her heirs and acolytes. And as the Conservative party reinvents itself as a viable political force once again, is the age of Thatcher finally over?
Interview
Thatcher & Sons by Simon Jenkins
WHO COULD BE MORE THATCHERITE THAN MAGGIE?
The history of Britain in the last thirty years, under both Conservative and Labour governments, has been dominated by one figure - Margaret Thatcher. Her election marked a decisive break with the past and her premiership transformed not just her country, but the nature of democratic leadership.
When Thatcher came to power in 1979, she inherited the Britain of the three-day week, the Winter of Discontent, and the Sick Man of Europe. Twenty years on, Britain’s economy became the most dynamic in Europe and London the most cosmopolitan city in the world, as the Labour government took Thatcher’s ideas further than ever before.
But by 2006, Britain was the most heavily regulated country in the non-socialist world, with every aspect of public activity relentlessly audited, and power more rigorously centralized than in any other mature democracy. The great instrument of centralization and audit was the Treasury, whose Thatcherite policies were carried to their apogee by the most controlling Chancellor of modern times, Gordon Brown.
Pithy, passionate and polemical, Simon Jenkins’s book explains the two Thatcherite revolutions, one of good, the other of bad effect, and how we have come to be where we are - prosperous but perplexed, economically liberated and spoilt for ‘choice' but less and less equal, infantilized by targets, overwhelmed by bureaucracy and frustrated by a politics which values spin over substance. He shows how 'of Thatcherism’s three Prime Ministers, Blair was the most Thatcherite’, privatizing far more relentlessly than Thatcher herself, and how he and Brown became her most loyal sons. It is his ‘argued history’ of Britain in the last twenty-five years, to which he gives a shape and coherence no other commentator has yet matched.
Product details
Format :
Paperback
ISBN: 9780141006246
Size : 129 x 198mm
Pages : 384
Published : 06 Sep 2007
Publisher : Penguin
Other formats for Thatcher and Sons:
» ePub eBook: eBook : £7.99
Thatcher and Sons
A Revolution in Three Acts
£9.99
£7.99
Related email updates
To keep up-to-date, input your email address, and we will contact you on publication or when the author releases another book.
Please alert me via email when:
