"Like Burke, Thatcher had a vision of a social order in which individual and society were melded harmoniously together."

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/05/reviewed-edmund-burke-philosopher-politician-prophet-jesse-norman

Reviewed: Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet by Jesse Norman

History has no author.


BY JOHN GRAY PUBLISHED 16 MAY 2013

Edmund Burke: Philosopher, Politician, Prophet
Jesse Norman
William Collins, 320pp, £20

Citing Edmund Burke’s view according to which “The temper of the people amongst whom he presides ought to be the first study of a statesman,” Jesse Norman comments: “This is a thought utterly foreign to contemporary notions of leadership, which focus on forward planning, motivating ideology, great programmes of legislation, decisive action and the vigour of a leader’s personal will.” They were written before she died but it would be impossible to read these lines without thinking of Margaret Thatcher.

.................................

Like Burke, Thatcher had a vision of a social order in which individual and society were melded harmoniously together. She never understood that this vision was incompatible with the economic ethos she preached. This isn’t because that ethos promoted selfishness, as has so often been asserted. What Thatcher did was subtler and more enduring in its effects. By insisting that economic progress must come before anything else, she turned social institutions into more or less efficient means of achieving whatever is presently desired. Institutions ceased to be places in which people could find meaning and became mere tools. The result is the situation that exists today in Britain, where no institution is “fit for purpose”.