Benjamin Thomas

@benjthomas

Political Ideologies, 20th Century Centre-Right, Neoliberalisms, Thought in Political Parties of UK & DE, Transnational discourses and the conjuncture benjaminjthomas.net

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Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 14d

I hadn't seen the NLP PPB before. Something could definitely be written on their economic and administrative policies. 'Abundance' feels anachronistic but there's also the hegemony of the minimal state.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 18d

The report includes fascinating headings like 'establish new voting criteria', 'demolishing class war mythology', 'developing "weapons for moderation"', 'making the time to do it', 'leadership and humanity'

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 19d

From what I understand the legal precedent is the appeal for www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2..., where there is a lot of deference to the Government. It reads like there is perhaps some wiggle on intended audience and intended impact on the audience.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 20d

Proofs submitted for the forthcoming article. Here's some of the characters who feature in the article. I read them together because they all advocate politically for/using the same concept.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 28d

The mining strike and the Government's approach to intervention. 'It merely sets the framework in which tough managerial decisions appear realistic and common sense and inescapable.'

significant adversary and the greatest political danger for the Thatcherite strategy is that the pains of transition to the new social and economic order of the 1990s may catapult into office a radical
Labour administration pledged to interrupt, slow down, and transform the current restructuring. That is why the miners' strike assumes such importance. After a few more years, if the business logic of MacGregor is pursued, the miners will no longer be numerous or powerful enough to offer significant resistance.
The Thatcher government and its allies know this very well. The decision to appoint MacGregor was a decision to accelerate the contraction of the mining industry and eliminate the subsidies, and
to challenge the miners to contest the decision. The actual cost of keeping more pits open would not be enormous, but the political cost would be much higher. What the Government seeks is a symbolic
affirmation that the logic of restructuring the economy to make all sectors internationally competitive cannot be resisted by any group of workers. Nevertheless the Government treads carefully. It has avoided involving itself too closely in particular managerial decisions. It merely sets the framework in which tough managerial decisions appear realistic and common sense and inescapable.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 28d

The political difference between Howe and Lawson, early and later Thatcherism, between inflation or tax cuts as the priority of economic politics.

The political calculation is clear. Unemployment is not expected to fall very much, it might even rise slightly. This does not bother the Government. The unemployed are ignored. Lawson hardly referred to
them in his budget speech. But for those in work, still the majority, substantial reductions in direct or indirect taxes will be made available. Tax cuts do not automatically buy votes, but tax increases are almost always unpopular. The aim of making tax cuts the Government's central economic objective is to provide tangible evidence that the economy is improving, that it is being well managed, that Britain
at last really is on the right track.
Howe made the control of inflation the Government's chief objective. This opened him to the charge of being a doctrinaire monetarist, wedded to an intellectual theory of how the economy worked

which he was determined to apply regardless of the evidence that showed the policy was not working. Lawson's objective is more astute politically. He knows that no economic doctrine will ever be supported
or understood by the bulk of Conservative MPs, still less by Conservative newspaper proprietors and Conservative voters.
There has to be a clear political pay-off.
Tax cuts provide this. They are probably the single most effective way of boosting confidence in the Government's economic management. In his budget Lawson signalled that there is an electoral crock of gold lying at the end of the rainbow. Like other rainbow treasure, however, it will not be won without some pain, and may vanish before the searchers can find it. The central objective of the Government's economic policy in this parliament is to maintain financial stability and secure substantial tax cuts. But in order to achieve this, the financial stability on which the forecast of 2% growth rests must not be disturbed. Secondly the line on public expenditure must be held. Otherwise all the scope for tax cuts could disappear.
This at once gives new importance to the major conflicts taking place in the public sector. Conservative MPs now have an additional reason to support the Government in its bid to phase out subsidies to loss-making state industries, to impose rate-capping, and to find ways of reducing the social security, education, and health budgets. For the more state spending in these areas is held down, the greater the
scope for tax cuts.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 28d

Interesting angle on the political significance of the Falklands war.

As a result despite the rise in unemployment and the collapse of manufacturing output and investment which brought the Government much temporary unpopularity the Government was still able to preserve its image as a Government which was planning for long term recovery and which would persevere with its policies whatever the short term costs.
By 1982 the Thatcher government had already established this image. The severity of the slump, although unanticipated by the Thatcher cabinet, was used very adroitly to ram home the basic Thatcherite
message: 'Things could not be allowed to go on as they were. Thirty years of neglect and misguided policies cannot be put right overnight. But the problems are too serious to be ignored any longer. Everyone
knows they have to be tackled.' The Falklands war did not create this message or the Government's reputation for toughness, but it did make many voters believe that the Thatcher government was serious about seeing its policies through. The political message of the Falklands war was that persistence and resolution paid.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 28d

'But the greatest danger to a durable social market consensus still rests in the Labour Party. Either the Labour Party must be brought to accept it, or the Labour Party must never govern again... No-one really expects the Labour Party to head down this road'

Yet perhaps the terms of this debate are misconceived. The Thatcher government has to be distinguished from the New Right, and Thatcherism as an ideology from Thatcherism as a set of policies and
decisions. It is after all inconceivable that the New Right could be completely successful in all their aims. No political force ever is. But success is not to be measured by the actual achievement of all objectives, but rather by the extent to which a significant proportion of both the objectives and the priorities and the means to achieve
them advanced by a particular group become endorsed and shared by other groups within the society. The progress of collectivist and socialist ideas in social policy and to a lesser extent in economic policy in this century is a striking example of this process, and the New Right constantly refer to it in their writings.
The real question to ask about Thatcherism, therefore, is how far is it creating this kind of broader consensus for its policies and objectives. This is perhaps the hardest question of all to answer about
contemporary British politics because the battle is joined at many separate points so that there is not one but many battles in
progress and assessments of the overall picture are constantly changing. Electoral contests and trends of electoral opinion,
the shifting fortunes of the political parties and the political leaders are only one barometer, although often the one paid most attention. Of critical importance also is what is happening to attitudes and
behaviour in schools, factories, offices, shops, hospitals and a host of other institutions. Our knowledge of these trends is often unreliable and very incomplete, but the real long term success or failure of
Thatcherism will be registered here.
At the public level of parties and elections it is clear that Thatcherism has had some success with the open conversion of the
leader of the SDP to the principles of the social market economy and his acceptance

of the need to strengthen state powers to police the social market economy against those who seek to disrupt its working. This
is a major step forward for the creation of a social market consensus, but it is qualified because the SDP partners in the Alliance, the Liberals, remain much more collectivist in their orientation, particularly as regards the size and purposes of public expenditure. But the greatest danger to a durable social market consensus still rests
in the Labour Party. Either the Labour Party must be brought to accept it, or the Labour Party must never govern again. In the first case this would mean the Labour Party abandoning Clause IV; accepting the
priority given to the control of inflation; renouncing protectionism whether in the form of tariffs, quotas or subsidies to shield any sector of the British economy from the need to be internationally competitive; and accepting a much smaller state sector, with lower taxation, selective rather than universal welfare provision, as well as the permanent weakening of trade union organisation and the institutions of popular sovereignty lessening their ability to intervene in the outcomes of free markets.
No-one really expects the Labour Party to head down this road, which means that if a social market consensus is to be established the Labour Party must cease to be a serious contender for government
office.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· 28d

For my forthcoming article, I returned to this Andrew Gamble article from Marxism Today, June 1984, which has a lot of interesting passages on the politics of Thatcherism. banmarchive.org.uk/marxism-toda...

Cool header image for the article. Thatcher as a spider with the UK in her web

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Jun 21

Really interesting article from @thomaseason.bsky.social and @arturnadiiev.bsky.social on the role of the Churchill myth in Ukraine's strategic communications towards UK and the British reception thereof. Really cool to see that they interviewed one of Zelenskyy’s speechwriters.

Zelenskyy repeatedly drew on the Churchill and WWII narratives to render Ukraine’s situation intelligible to a British audience by embedding it within familiar narratives. In his first address to the UK Parliament, he declared: ‘We do not want to lose what we have, what is ours – Ukraine. Just as you did not want to lose your island when the Nazis were preparing to start the battle for your great power, the Battle for Britain’ (Zelenskyy, 8 March 2022). Here, he grounded Ukraine’s experience in one of Britain’s most enduring national myths – the story of standing alone against tyranny. He positioned Ukraine’s defence of its sovereignty as a contemporary counterpart to Britain’s wartime resistance, allowing UK audiences to make sense of Ukraine’s struggle through a familiar narrative story of the Battle of Britain.
Narratives such as this were used throughout all of Zelenskyy’s speeches to make sense of Ukraine’s wartime experience for his UK audience. For example, in Zelenskyy’s last speech analysed for this research project, he stated:
80 years ago, Manchester survived the Christmas Blitz. This spring, the whole of Ukraine survived the Easter Blitz. 80 years ago, the Nazis razed Coventry. This year, the Ruscists created dozens of new Coventries in Ukraine. These are Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka, Kharkiv, Mariupol. (Zelenskyy, 25 October 2024)
Here, he used the Blitz to help the UK audience understand Ukraine’s wartime experience, explaining the suffering Ukraine is going through at the hands of Russia as similar to the suffering the United Kingdom endured during the Blitz. During the interview, our participant revealed that he read a book about the Blitz and personal stories of experiencing it, and, relatedly, Zelenskyy read a book about Churchill. He identified parallels between the United Kingdom then and Ukraine now and used them to inform his work, making sense of Ukraine’s current experience for the UK audience.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· May 6

Never seen essential criteria like this on a job before, and frankly I don't know if it is really justified from what they set out, but it's a theology job and I'm sure human resources will have had a field day figuring it out.

Person specification
A. Essential:
1. Hold a degree at doctoral level in either Islamic Studies or Islamic Sciences, or in
Christian Theology;
2. Have an established record in published scholarly research commensurate with the
stage of their career, suitable to be considered as potentially eligible for inclusion in
any research excellence exercise in which the University of Oxford engages;
3. Have a commitment to the religious tradition to which they belong, and be an active
participant in their worshipping community;*
4. Have an appropriate familiarity with the Scriptures of their religious tradition.*

* These particular requirements form an Occupational Requirement under the Equality Act 2010
(Part 16, Schedule 9, Part 1) arising from the need to fulfil the academic duties of the post, which
include engagement in Christian-Muslim dialogue and assistance with a vocational programme for
the formation of Christian ministers.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Apr 27

I certainly hope this is some form of technical error - I chased in January and was assured by an administrator that it was out for review - but this absolutely sucks and an editor should have reached out by now.

05 October 2025 - Revised Manuscript Submitted
05 October 2025 - With Journal Administrator
06 October 2025 - With Editor
21 March 2026 - Out for Review

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Mar 19

The @politicalquarterly.bsky.social's editorial policies have likely changed somewhat since the late 1940s.

I sent it to The Political Quarterly, the joint editors being Leonard Woolf and William Robson (Professor of Public Administration at LSE). This proved to be a mistake. Robson rang me up and berated me for sending what appeared to be ‘a piece of liberal propaganda’ which a good solid Socialist periodical could not possibly publish. It was in vain that I argued that James Meade, who had given this negative tax proposal a run for its money in his recent writings, was a member of the Labour Party. The ‘piece of propaganda’ was firmly rejected and remained unpublished, never to see the light of day.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Mar 17

Marquand - 1998

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/55680/the-blair-paradox

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Mar 14

Is there an account of what happened to the Sheffield Group? I was reading this yesterday and they mention an intention to publish annually. It's not as if these people disappeared.

The Social Economy and the Democratic State: A new policy agenda
Edited by Pete Alcock, Andrew Gamble, Ian Gough, Phil Lee, Alan Walker
'the Sheffield Group'
foreword by David Blunkett MP

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Feb 10

I've written a new blog on what we mean by neoliberalism in historical scholarship, and some misrepresentations I want to engage with (I don't have any beef with this article in particular). benjaminjthomas.net/musings/neoliberalism-troup

At the end of 2025, Modern British History published Charles Troup’s article ‘Roads to Economization: Valuing Life, Limb, and Leisure in the Social Democratic State’, which was awarded the 2024 Duncan Tanner Essay Prize. The article, which is well worth the read, draws on the work of Elizabeth Popp Berman’s Thinking Like an Economist, to challenge the established history of neoliberalism in Britain, identifying practices and policies in British public administration commonly associated with neoliberalism as predating Thatcher’s governments from 1979 and Thatcherism.
Initially, I felt certain bemusement. At the beginning of 2025 I had published my own article, well worth the read, which draws on the work of Elizabeth Popp Berman’s Thinking Like an Economist to challenge the established history of neoliberalism in Britain, identifying practices and policies in British public administration commonly associated with neoliberalism as predating Thatcher’s governments from 1979 and Thatcherism.
The more I thought about the articles, the more I was struck by a contrast. While Troup positions their article as against neoliberalism as explanation, I tend to see my article is broadly compatible and instead a modification of the neoliberalism argument. In spite of ostensibly similar arguments, we arrive at very different conclusions. Comparing my article to Troup’s can help explore where I see an important distinction that might be worth sharing.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Feb 6

I think Will Davies is on the nose on this story

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Oct 20

Etwas kleines - Thatcher und Joseph gründeten die Centre for Policy Studies, nicht die IEA. Aber das ist ein tolles Wortspiel.

Eine dieser Anekdoten bezieht sich noch auf die Zeit, bevor sie als einfache Abgeordnete für den Wahlkreis Finchley ins Unterhaus einzog. Thatcher hatte Chemie studiert und arbeitete nach ihrem Abschluss Anfang der 50er Jahre unter anderem in der Lebensmittelindustrie. In diesem Zusammenhang, so die Erzählung, soll sie mit ihrer Forschungsarbeit zur Entwicklung des Soft-Eis beigetragen haben. Auch wenn sich die Geschichte nicht zweifelsfrei bestätigen lässt, ist sie zu gut, um sie unerwähnt zu lassen, denn bekanntlich war Thatcher als Politikerin das Gegenteil von soft. Bereits 1976, als sie noch als Parteichefin der Conservative Party die Opposition anführte, verlieh ihr Radio Moskau nach einer geharnischten Rede nach allen Regeln der Kunst des Kalten Krieges den Spitznamen ›Eiserne Lady‹.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Oct 19

Here's the names acknowledged in Hamilton's 'Foundations of Alignment' basically an EDS manifesto. Half become quite significant figures in politics and civil service (with Wikipedia pages and the lot) and the other half are a pain to track down, if even possible. [There is an EDS alumni network]

Nigel Ashford, Mark Hudson and Edward Locke - Federation of Conservative Students; Johan Bengt-Pahlsson - Fria Moderata Student Forbundt; Michel Claris and Patrick d'Humieres - Generation Sociale et Liberale; Michael Fisher - Fine Gael; Søren Høgehaven and Peter Stub Jorgensen - Danmarks Konservative Studerende; Jørn Johansen, Hans Kristian Lehmann and John Arthur Lunde - Norges Konservative Studenter Forbund; Rainer Taubert - Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Oct 19

Ashford was less of a diplomat and more ideological, involved with libertarian circles. He became an academic, contributing to noteworthy Layton-Henry volume, but then went into the American conservative networks, as a long-running Program Officer for the Institute for Humane Studies.

Image of Nigel Ashford w/ IHS badge from Wikipedia

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Oct 19

Hamilton works for the party for a time and then becomes a lobbyist in the UK and Brussels. His career seems to have gone dark after he and his partners (or at least his firm) were involved in the Priti Patel lobbying scandal (remember that?).

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Oct 19

The careers of EDS functionaries are interesting things. At the apex for centre-right student politics they could be the big step before national office or a dead end. Looking at EDS execs in this period is indicative. A number of these people went into national politics

European Democrat Students Executives in the 1970s - extract from Thuss and Bauer 'Students on the right way' (2012)

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Oct 19

Hamilton who is on the cover of the book, was a Chairman of the EDS and then Head of the Conservative International Office. Ashford was Hamilton's Secretary General 1976-78. This was the EDS’s great moment of Europeanisation but also the beginning of its end.

Scott Hamilton, from the cover of Conservatism, Christian Democracy and the dynamics of transformation: Traditions, cooperation and influence in North-West Europe, 1945-91 (2025)

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Oct 12

I wonder how much thought and discussion (from author and publisher) went into this copy and what word choices will be used for the next one.

... the Tories have arguably done more than simply reshape themselves: rather, they seem to have transformed themselves from a mainstream centre-right party into an ersatz radical right-wing populist outfit...

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Sep 12

I would imagine that this newspaper article was probably the first (and only?) to read Margaret Thatcher alongside Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul and Jusos.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Sep 11

Really dispiriting reading this article about Reeves' comments about regulators to a venture capital and private equity summit. The implied subservience from regulators and government to business, and the finance behind it, is telling. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The chancellor also said she had received positive feedback after deciding to “get rid of” the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Marcus Bokkerink in January. Former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr was appointed in his place, on an interim basis.

That leadership shake-up, Reeves said, had led to a “massive step-change” that was welcomed by firms. “Previously businesses, all the time – especially in tech – had been raising concerns about the CMA. That has changed a lot.”

Reeves acknowledged there was more to do in the City, including with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). However, she threw her weight behind chief executive, Nikhil Rathi, who was approved for a second five-year term in April. “When I wrote to regulators and asked: ‘What can you do to drive growth?’ … Nikhil responded positively to that. And that’s why we reappointed him to carry on heading up FCA.”

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Sep 10

Rogaly did respond in his next column, with some snarky comments clearly engaging with Wassell's response. What is interesting here is the engagement with social markets as not just the moment of Währungsreform but in the context of developments in subsequent decades.

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Sep 10

The CPS responded with a Letter to the Editor later that week. It's fascinating to see the acceptance that West Germany had deviated from ordoliberalism but a doubling down on them. Here West Germans hadn't deviated from social markets because of the emergence of new challenges, their deviation from

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Sep 10

An interesting response came from Joe Rogaly of the FT, who wrote a piece on how dated the focus on social markets was. This theory/history may have been relevant in the late 1940s when it was seen to kickstart the economic miracle, but it simply wasn't relevant in West Germany anymore where the

Benjamin Thomas@benjthomas· Sep 10

Check out this letter from Simon Webley of the CPS to the economic historian Bob Coats. Not only is the social market identified as the focus of the CPS, it mentions a seminar held with Sir Paul Chambers, who had been actively involved in the reforms.