In his 1993 book Spectres of Marx, Jaques Derrida introduced the concept of Hauntology as he saw it; where the modern state of reality is increasingly defined, or haunted, by spectres of the past. This is to say, in the words of the late Mark Fisher, that despite their present non-existence, past events ‘are still effective as a virtuality, in the traumatic compulsion to repeat a fatal pattern’.
Fisher’s particular exploration of Hauntology as a theme in Stanley Kubrik’s The Shining, helps to further illustrate the idea. In the film, Jack Torrence occupies the role of ‘caretaker’ at the Overlook Hotel, where spectres of the building’s past speak to him, and compel him to commit violent acts against his family, despite possessing no physical existence of their own. Although primarily adapted by Fisher for an analysis of popular film and music culture, his writings offer a unique perspective from which to understand the modern western ideological paradigm in political economy, and why it is imperative we reject it.
As always, we must start this conversation on the current British political paradigm with the woman who created it. In her vicious attacks on the Keynesianism that dominated the decades before her rise to power, Thatcher radically transformed the battleground of politics for the leaders that would succeed her. During her time in office, the Tory party would shed its ideological allegiance to ‘one nation’ conservatism for that of neoliberalism, where the party line praised the self-correcting power of markets, and determined poverty the simple product of a lack of character.
Within British political discourse more broadly, Thatcher translated what was already the predominant ideological left-right struggle of the age, between the capitalist US and the state-controlled USSR. The miner’s strike of 1984-85 would come to be the defining symbol of this social and political struggle, with the forces of the old social-democratic establishment in bitter conflict with neoliberalism’s merciless assault on the barriers to the free market order.
From the rupture in the established political order that was Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years as Prime Minister, battles of ideology in British politics have been unable to shake her imposition of the left-right binary. Even seemingly radical diversions from the traditional party positions only serve to reinforce the same fundamental spectrum.
Tony Blair’s rightwards reforms of the Labour Party in the 1990s were undoubtedly unprecedented in the party’s history, but they were no more revolutionary than a move to the right along an already pre-established spectrum of ideas. Similarly, the Labour shift to the left in the Corbyn years did not challenge the assumptions of the paradigm, that economic and social issues should be approached by either increasing or decreasing government intervention and spending, but instead shifted the party line within it.
In this sense, the spectres of Thatcher and the ideological struggle she embodied persist to define the contours of political reform in the modern age. Once again, in the words of Mark Fischer, this phenomenon has ‘meant the acceptance of a situation in which culture would continue without really changing, and where politics was reduced to the administration of an already established […] system’.
Interestingly, we have recently seen the issue of immigration become politically significant in mainstream discourse. The Conservative Party’s lurch to the right on this, as well as on the US import of ‘woke politics’, does present a slight deviation in focus from the traditional conflict between capital and state. However, we need only look at the fervour surrounding this year’s October budget, as well as government spending decisions since the 2010 Coalition Government, to see British politics has become almost completely consumed by the problem of the nation’s public finances. This, of course, is merely the modern rebrand of the Keynesian position on public spending, and Thatcher’s distaste for it.
More superficially, we can see the ghosts of past party heroes conjured to amass political appeal, and obtain legitimacy for candidates in the present day establishment. Keir Starmer made an appearance in 2023 at a conference hosted by Tony Blair, where not only was he interviewed by the man himself, but declared subsequently in a speech that his motion to change the party would be ‘clause four on steroids’. This, of course, would mean very little to those uninformed on the constitutional history of the Labour Party, but it served to reinforce the new party leader’s position on the same old ideological spectrum, by rehashing the same ideas of his predecessor.
On the Tory side, party leaders for the past few years have existed almost entirely as vessels for the ghosts of the party’s past. Most awkwardly so in the case of Liz Truss who, in an attempt to fully embody the Iron Lady, dressed in the same clothes as her idol in her bid for the party leadership. In a more subtle yet equally revealing manner, both Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch appealed to the spectres of Thatcher for political legitimacy. Sunak used the political capital of Thatcher’s own chancellor Nigel Lawson to make his case as ‘the only candidate who understands Thatcherite economics’, and Kemi Badenoch compared herself to Thatcher when she faced backlash over suggesting maternity pay was too high in this country.
The problem with a political culture haunted by the past in this manner is that, put simply, the past is not the present. To use Derrida’s own reference to Hamlet in Spectres of Marx; when observing the anachronisms of modern political discourse one feels that ‘time is out of joint’. In a practical sense, as Sam Freedman succinctly argues in his book Failed State, the policy problems of today are not what they were 40 years ago, and ‘judging new ideas against whether they would have appealed to Thatcher, Blair, or any other historical figure, acts as a block on innovation’.
The truth is the primary issues facing the British state in 2024 cannot be neatly placed on the economic left-right spectrum as defined by Margaret Thatcher. The absence of effective policy scrutiny in Parliament, the political partisanship of the House of Lords, the media pressure inhibiting thought-out and effective reform, and the excessive centralisation of the government’s mandate, are all issues open to both sides of the house. Both Tony Blair and David Cameron’s support for increased localism, regardless of its eventual implementation, prove this fact.
Much like Jack Torrence at the Overlook Hotel, Keir Starmer now finds himself the caretaker of No. 10 Downing Street. The ghosts of Thatcher and her successors whisper in his ear, looking down at him from paintings on the wall, compelling him to repeat their fatal pattern. Starmer, unlike Torrence, has displayed some resistance to their calls, insofar as he has pledged to reform the House of Lords. To quote the late Mark Fischer one last time, we shall have to see whether the new leader of the Labour Party has ‘the capacity to conceive of a world radically different from the one in which we currently live’.
Image: Flickr/duncan cumming
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