NYT-1201: STATE OF THE ART A Thermostat That's Clever, Not ...

ime minister last year, the financial crisis stil
l felt, to most of the British electorate, like so
mething short-term and vaguely unreal.
But British politics has lost something with its p
ost-Thatcher embrace of consensus and optimism. Th
atcherism was a galvanizing force. It mobilized ri
ght-wingers to do things, such as selling off huge
state-owned corporations, that many of them would
once have considered impossible. It also mobilize
d the left to develop radical alternatives: during
the 1980s, the Labour Party veered toward support
for unilateral nuclear disarmament and increased
state intervention in the economy.
Unlike today, voters in 1983 faced clear choices.
A vote for Thatcher’s Tories was a vote for largescale
privatization; a vote for Labour was a vote
for socialism. A Conservative vote meant keeping B
ritain in the European Economic Community; a Labou
r vote meant withdrawal. A Tory vote meant station
ing American cruise missiles in Britain; a Labour
vote meant that they would be stopped.
There are no longer such clear-cut choices. Explic
it talk of class interests and inequality have bee
n replaced by a vaguer and less divisive language
of “fairness” and “equal opportunity.”
The major political parties look remarkably simila
r today. All are led by clean-cut 40-somethings wh
o blend social liberalism (support for same-sex ma
rriage and opposition to the death penalty) with a
cceptance of the free market. Indeed, the Conserva
tives now find themselves governing with strange b
edfellows, in a coalition with the small Liberal D
emocrat Party, whose president recently described
Thatcherism as “organized wickedness.” Mrs. Thatch
er hated coalitions. She most likely would have pr
eferred to lose an election than to govern without
an outright parliamentary majority.