Boris Johnson now needs Margaret Thatcher’s iron will – Bernard Ingham

At the last count Boris Johnson’s government stood accused of eight U-turns this year on anything from testing and tracing coronavirus to school meal vouchers during the summer break, assuming there is one after the lockdown.

Labour leader Keir Starmer, the champion of the underclasses, cannot bring himself to tell the teaching unions to stop playing games and do what they are paid for.

Oxford’s Oriel College, capitulating to anti-slavery campaigners’ demand for the removal of Cecil Rhodes’ statue, don’t seem to have the wit to point to the mob’s silence over the effective enslavement of religious minorities in China and Burma.

Nor is the fundamental racialism and inhumanity of Stalin or Mao condemned when between them they slaughtered millions.

As for the hullabullo about colonialism, why is it that the British Empire has become a Commonwealth of 54 nation states, some of which – notably Mozambique and Rwanda – were never subject to British rule? And if Cecil Rhodes was such a rotter, why does Robert Mugabe escape censure for rolling in ill-gotten gains while oppressing Zimbabweans and at the same time wrecking their economy?

I cannot for the life of me see why the Rugby Union’s anthem – Swing low, sweet chariot – is remotely racist when supporters honour a prime example of Afro-American culture. If the RFU’s administrators give way to demands for its “abolition”, you can be assured that the lunatics have really taken over the asylum.

Nor can I begin to understand Boris giving in to Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford over continuing school meals vouchers during the summer break when the Government is an advocate of self-reliance. In any case, there is absolutely no excuse for children being under-nourished in our welfare state (I distinguish between under-nourished and hunger since as a lad I was always famished even though well fed). It is parents’ responsibility to nurture their children and, if, they don’t, they – including absent fathers – should be hauled before a court for a fundamental failure of parental responsibility.

I think I prove my point. There is inconsistency everywhere you look. I am inclined to make some allowance for Government inconsistency in tackling coronavirus, if not Boris’s spending £900,000 on repainting his official plane when Britain is diving ever deeper into debt. It has by definition been learning about a virus we had never heard of until this year.

But our Government is looking distinctly untidy even without effective opposition. This matters both short and long-term. Governments are either strong or weak – there is no in between – and if ever we needed strong Government it is now when many around it are losing their marbles.

I write as one who spent much time and energy in the service of Governments to secure consistency of policy and action. And never more so than under Margaret Thatcher who was secure in her own philosophy and possessed of an iron will, but was often assailed by weaker vessels.

I played “spot the U-turn” with political correspondents for much of her first term until they got bored. But there was one explicable retreat from confrontation with Arthur Scargill when she found the Department of Energy under David Howell had done nothing to prepare for the inevitable challenge. Nigel Lawson was sent to Energy to cram power stations full of fuel.

It could be argued that Mrs Thatcher fell because of her consistency in economic, European and poll tax matters. That under-plays the disloyalty of her leading colleagues and my contention that, if the original poll tax concept had been applied, chronically over-spending local authorities would have been democratically reined in.

Incidentally, members of “impoverished” local authorities – who for 40 years have blamed central government for their profligacy – do not hesitate to take their £10,000-a-year allowances while pleading poverty. Another example of the inconsistency epidemic.

What then is at stake in this inconsistent or professionally hypocritical world? The short answer is freedom and democracy. We need a healthy democracy to maintain our freedoms which are now daily under siege from totalitarians, however insignificant in numbers, with their attendant mobs. Arthur Scargill’s attempt to remove an elected government at the cruel expense of his members failed because of one individual’s consistency of principle and purpose.

Boris take heed. Be not afraid to be consistent.

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