When you are threatened by members of your own tribe, one strategy which is available to a leader is to find or create a threat from an alien tribe. I think this is what Teresa May was doing when this morning out of the blue she discovered Russia as a threatening and dangerous enemy.
Her strategy is a far cry from Margaret Thatcher's in 1984, when, in an interview with John Cole, the BBC political correspondent, our then Tory leaderine declared, "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together."
Of course in 1984 Mrs Thatcher was still assured of her position in the Conservative Party. Later in 1990 she was ambushed by senior people in her tribe and had no time to magic up the kind of enemy threat which had helpfully come her way in 1982 at the time of the Falkland crisis.
Having said all that don't let it be thought that I don't know that Mrs Thatcher was an enemy of most of us in the United Kingdom during her years of power. You just need to look at how she began the destruction of the post-war consensus which insisted that we needed a national health service, an education system available for all, a welfare programme, a national transport system, many other public services as well as fair rights for workers. Oh! I forgot to mention that she introduced the Poll Tax.
Teresa May is in a weak position. She is, like her predecessor David Cameron, an incompetent Prime Minister. She will be ambushed by her political tribesmen (it is likely they will be men) when the time is right for them. The thing is we have an immediate need to be rid of her and her political kin. They are sub-mediocre. They are calamitously incapable. Why is it in a so called democracy we, the ordinary folks, have no apparatus to help us dismiss them now?
Her strategy is a far cry from Margaret Thatcher's in 1984, when, in an interview with John Cole, the BBC political correspondent, our then Tory leaderine declared, "I like Mr. Gorbachev. We can do business together."
Of course in 1984 Mrs Thatcher was still assured of her position in the Conservative Party. Later in 1990 she was ambushed by senior people in her tribe and had no time to magic up the kind of enemy threat which had helpfully come her way in 1982 at the time of the Falkland crisis.
Having said all that don't let it be thought that I don't know that Mrs Thatcher was an enemy of most of us in the United Kingdom during her years of power. You just need to look at how she began the destruction of the post-war consensus which insisted that we needed a national health service, an education system available for all, a welfare programme, a national transport system, many other public services as well as fair rights for workers. Oh! I forgot to mention that she introduced the Poll Tax.
Teresa May is in a weak position. She is, like her predecessor David Cameron, an incompetent Prime Minister. She will be ambushed by her political tribesmen (it is likely they will be men) when the time is right for them. The thing is we have an immediate need to be rid of her and her political kin. They are sub-mediocre. They are calamitously incapable. Why is it in a so called democracy we, the ordinary folks, have no apparatus to help us dismiss them now?
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