The conservatives are (no longer) the solution, but the problem

When Margaret Thatcher had been elected prime minister 40 years before, in 1979, the UK had terrible problems. After many turbulent years, the Labour Party could no way solve the serious problems of the country. The winter of discontent had proved that the Labour Party could not anymore give any solution and preserve the social state of the last decades. This party itself had invited the IMF, they could not control the inflation and the unemployment was high (especially for a party whose top priority was full employment). The oil crises had totally destroyed the post-war economic system of the UK.

And then, Margaret Thatcher was elected on May 1979. She would never have been elected with such an agenda if the Labour Party had not proved that it had no answer to the problems of that time. The rest is History. The conservatives governed for 18 years (four consecutive elections’ victories). Not only that, but they also destroyed ideologically their political opponents. The New-Labour party of 1997 had nothing to do with the Labour Party of 1979.

But why did this happen? Was Thatcher so successful? Well, yes and no. She was successful to solve problems of those times, but of course she created new,serious problems. The same way like Franklin Roosvelt in 1933–1945. He solved many problems and he created other problems. We should not try to understand history in a manichaistic perspective. Popular political parties are the ones that solve important problems of a period until the problems that they will create will be so apparent that their correction will be the first priority for the citizens.

In 2010s it became apparent that the party that was the clear ideological leader of the UK for the last decades became a problem itself. After the opportunist referendum that David Cameron proclaimed and the result of 2016, the conservatives have desperately tried to find a deal that would be in the interest of the UK. Nobody succeeded that, though, and nobody will, because it was a ridiculous choice from the very beginning. The conservatives stopped giving solutions, even worse they created extremely serious problems to the country.

And if getting out of the EU would be a pathetic legacy of this party, Johnson’s decision to suspend the parliament creates an even more serious democratic problem. The party has become toxic for the country and it is necessary to leave the power, get aside and seriously reconsider most of the choices that they made last years.

And the irony? If Jeremy Corbyn is going to be the person that will be trusted to give solutions to the current problems, then Margaret Thatcher would be very sad to see that such a left-wing leader would take the fate of the country in his hands right at the time that the conservatives have got politically bankrupt.

If “history repeats itself”, then the year 2019 or anyway the year of the next general elections may be proved to be for the Labour Party its own “1979”. For the better fate of the UK, let’s hope that Jeremy Corbyn can find the solutions.