What the hell is Rachel Reeves on about now?

Rachel Reeves is portraying herself as the new Thatcher and promising an economic "take off" like 1979, but Thatcher delivered recession, inflation, and unemployment.

Labour’s austerity-obsessed shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves is trying to present herself as the new Margaret Thatcher and promising an economic "take off" like 1979 followed by "decade of renewal" like the 1980s.

The main problem with this absurd ahistorical narrative is that the immediate impacts of Thatcherism were the biggest recession since WWII, soaring inflation, and a doubling of unemployment.

Thatcher’s depraved economic agenda caused two massive recessions, literally doubled unemployment, ran down public services, left core British industries to ruin, wrecked the housing market, abandoned Britain’s industrial heartlands, and delivered almost exactly the same rate of GDP growth as the supposedly awful 1970s.

It’s clearly Labour Party policy to heap praise on Thatcher’s radical-right economic agenda because Reeves’ deceptive Thatcher revisionism is being repeated by other Labour right-wingers like Darren Jones and David Lammy.

The idea that Thatcher "renewed" Britain is clearly offensive drivel to people living in regions that are still blighted by the effects of Thatcher’s depraved ideological agenda decades later.

Imagine telling people in South Wales, Liverpool, Sheffield, Teesside, Tyneside, the post-industrial Midlands, and central Scotland that Thatcher "renewed" their cities and regions, rather than wilfully abandoning them to focus on helping City of London spivs get filthy rich at everyone else’s expense!

Imagine telling young people trapped in rip-off private rentals and unable to afford houses of their own that Thatcher’s destruction of social housing, commodification of property ownership, and roll back of tenants’ rights were part of a successful "renewal" process, rather than the ideological depravity at the root of the current housing crisis!

Imagine telling people who want the infestation of private profiteers kicked out of our vital infrastructure and services (the majority of British people) that Thatcher "renewed" Britain by taking things like water, energy, transport, steel, and other core industries out of public control to hand them over to greedy parasitical profiteers!

Thatcherism devastated traditional Labour voting regions, devastated the housing market, and let profiteering looters run amok in our economy, and now we’re watching a depraved right-wing iteration of the Labour Party telling the victims of all this ruination that she did a good thing!

Furthermore, portraying what Thatcher did as a "take off" is offensive ahistorical nonsense to anyone with the slightest grip on reality.

After one year of Thatcherism the UK economy was in the worst recession since WWII, shrinking 2% in 1980, inflation soared to 17% as a result of her deluded monetarist policies, and by 1981 she’s literally doubled unemployment to over 12%!

It’s literally insane to portray a prolonged recession, soaring inflation, and a doubling of unemployment as some kind of miraculous economic "take off" to be praised and emulated, especially when the architect of this economic disaster is absolutely detested by your party’s traditional voters.

Starmer’s Labour are clearly spouting this ludicrous reality-reversed nonsense in an attempt to to appeal to the Tory press and Tory voters, and it just goes to show the utter contempt they have for their traditional Labour voters.

They’re complacently assuming that those who abhor Thatcher’s toxic legacies have nowhere else to turn, so they think they can rewrite history to portray Thatcher’s destruction of their regions and communities as a good thing to be emulated, while promising more of the ruinous Tory austerity economics that’s done so much damage over the last 14 years. And they expect people in these places to still flock to the polls to vote for them!

Labour are not centre-left if they support the damage Thatcher did to the country, and talk about emulating it. They’re clearly and obviously hard-right.

Wanting to see the back of the Tories is understandable, but what’s the point if they’re just going to be replaced with another hard-right, austerity-obsessed Thatcherite party that rewrites history to glorify the ideological lunacy and economic damage she wreaked?

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