Quote:
Originally Posted by TheDaddy
Yeah the point was though the tories have taken a very different approach to the welfare state since the 70's than they did before in that they used to compete with labour to make it better whereas in the last fifty years they've done all they could to destroy it
|
But the perceived politics of one party is not a suitable baseline to start from (even assuming it’s true - and given that the NHS has been under Tory control for most of its existence, and about 30 of the last 44 years since 1979, if they really are trying to actually destroy it, they’ve been about as effective as Wile E. Coyote).
The point is, the welfare state introduced by the Attlee government (1945-1951) fundamentally changed the demands placed on whoever has been in power ever since, while at the same time the UK, Europe and the world began to come to terms with the massive economic and social restructuring demanded by the end of world war 2. Both parties have shown differing political priorities since then, but that is when the modern rules of the game were set, and that is why serious academic treatment of ‘modern era’ British government and politics starts with 1945, not friendly but ultimately quite arbitrary figures like ‘50 years’.