Turning Points by Steve Richards
My favourite podcast at the moment is ‘Not Another One’. The title is Brenda from Bristol’s exasperated response when she heard that another election had been called. Here, however, it refers to the fact that this podcast is hosted by four political commentators with different political allegiances – Steve Richards (Labour), Miranda Green (Lib Dems), Tim Montgomery (Reform) and Ian Martin (Tory).
It’s not another chat between people who, generally, agree with each other on the big issues. Their friendly but firm challenging of each other’s positions illuminates the issues and shows that reasoned discourse is an alternative to the aggressive conflict in our politics since Brexit.
In this book, though, Richards constructs his own coherent narrative about those key moments since 1945 when, he believes, politics took the country on a particularly significant course that impacted on people in this country. For example, the Suez crisis, confirmed our reduced global standing and began the slow, tortuous move towards Europe that Macmillan initiated when he replaced the ailing Eden.
Most obviously, he reflects on Thatcher’s ascendancy when she rejected the idea of the good that state intervention could achieve – validated post war by the achievements of the Attlee government – replacing that planned economy concept with the vibrant entrepreneurial spirit, light regulation and imperatives of the market as the best way to meet people’s needs.
If you’ve absorbed a lot of Richards’ reflections as I have then there is nothing too surprising here. And the turning points are those that would be recognised by most of us – Attlee’s government, the move towards and away from Europe, the financial crash … you can add the remainder yourself, I’m sure.
Where Richards is most interesting, I think, is his focus on the grip and influence these ideas can have on the decisions made at key moments. He accepts that history does not repeat itself but ghosts of past administrations and past political conflicts impact, often disastrously, on politicians when they seem most dominant. Blair, for example, was so haunted by the shadows of Suez, Wilson’s defiance of LJB over Vietnam and, perhaps most significantly, Labour’s commitment to unilaterally disarm in the 1983 election, that he told Bush he was with him all the way about invading Iraq - even when he failed to secure a UN resolution in support of action.
Until recently, Thatcher’s free market creed has held sway not only over the Tories but New Labour. Richards sees the 2008 crash, Brexit and covid as the turning points when the politicians felt they had to step away from this ideological straitjacket. Johnson’s incoherent and ill-formed ideas about levelling up nevertheless acknowledged the need for government to intervene in those areas where the market and globalisation had abandoned whole communities. Even Farage, the Thatcher loving former stockbroker, has stolen those clothes with his calls for nationalisation and the raising of the two child cap.
Starmer also picked up on this when he came to power with his faith in a strong public sector to provide the context for a growing economy. Yet like Blair he feels hindered by the economic legacy of Labour’s past - or, at least, the pejorative way the right wing press has characterised it. As a result, we see his and Reeves’ determination to out do the Tories on financial responsibility with their fiscal rules, welfare cuts and caution over tax rises.
Richards writes about these turning points with a clear sense of the historical context and traces the way a groundswell for change develops. Often this groundswell can take years - the seeds of Brexit, for example, can be traced back to Thatcher’s failure to reinvigorate the northern working class communities as the heavy industries closed down; and this was exacerbated by the way seemingly popular policies such as the sale of council houses led to a loss of social housing because the proceeds weren’t used to build new homes.
Such connections are at the heart of this book; and Richards traces them with his usual fluency and clarity. I’m a fan and this seems to me another good insight into the political history of modern Britain.