Tim Montgomerie with Bruce Anderson and Simon Wolfson last night defeated a motion at The Spectator debate which read: "Britain is in decline again but unfortunately Cameron is more of a Heath than a Thatcher'. The vote was 290 versus 154. The opponents were Simon Heffer, peter Hitchens and Kelvin MacKenzie. This is the text of his remarks.
I think we can all agree that Britain is in decline.
If you take three of Margaret Thatcher's biggest achievements they are all being undone.
The unions are as powerful as ever. Not a force in the private sector but in the classrooms, in hospitals, across the public sector - roadblocks to reform, protecting the fact that Labour has made public sector workers richer, on average, than private sector workers for the first time. Are they grateful? Not for a moment. Yesterday one union leader said Labour was the worst in history. This is a beast that you feed and feed but it only growls greedily for more.
In the Falklands Margaret Thatcher led our armed forces to a great victory. In Iraq, Blair and Brown led them to international humiliation. Our individual troops are brave. The best. Noone doubts that but, make no mistake, we were defeated in southern Iraq.
Thirdly, and I would say most importantly for this election, she reduced the size of the state and made Britain the enterprise capital of Europe. Blair and Brown may have been elected as New Labour but they governed as Old. The state now consumes more than 50% of our national income. Dependency has risen high up the income scale. Parts of the economy are Sovietised.
Labour has the sinister ambition of making enough voters dependent upon the state for their income that a small state party will struggle to win office ever again. They are on the verge of succeeding. The fact that this rotten government can still command something like 30% of the vote is testimony to their support within the public and welfare sectors. Give them four or five more years and the chances of anything like a Thatcherite government being elected will be gone for good.
So the stakes are high at this election. As Horatio Nelson might say, "Any captain not engaging the enemy is not at his post!” And the enemy is not David Cameron. The enemy is a re-elected Labour government. Our friends Simon Heffer, Peter Hitchens and Kelvin MacKenzie are not at their posts. They are the critics hurling abuse from the stands. Theodore Roosevelt had their sort in his mind when he warned that it is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
Our opponents tonight are the cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
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