Ideologies and Parties: Do the coalition’s cuts signal a return to 1980s anti-statist ideology?

Do the coalition’s cuts signal a return to the 1980s? In the Independent, Steve Richards in “Just as in the Eighties ideology is driving the spending cuts” - for then, as now, choices were made on the basis of politicians view the state.

Both in the 1980s and now, governments took ideological decisions to limit the activities of the state, writes Steve Richards. They took subsequent actions to make the consequences a little “fairer” but the fundamental decision determined all that followed. What is interesting with this sequel to that decade is that the crusaders continue the anti-state revolution in a less promising context. Margaret Thatcher’s tonal aggression matched the social unease of the times. The coalition’s tonal focus on fairness and its claims to be progressive do not chime so well with its commitment to shrinking the state. Thatcher made her moves more cautiously over three budgets and she had big overall majorities. The coalition acts in a hung parliament, with some Liberal Democrats stirring. Politics is defined once more by a battle over ideas. And choices are being made on the basis of how politicians view the state—as an instrument that can be benevolent or stifling.

Richards concludes: “Politics is defined once more by a battle over ideas and is not a choice between two different sets of managers. Unlike in the 1980s, the advocates of a shrinking state are not necessarily swimming with the ideological tide.”