If you read as many of the highly paid newspaper columnists as I do you can spot a trend. After the PM’s utterly crass comments about Margaret Thatcher’s genius in destroying the UK coal industry in order to prevent climate change, they all had a similar line.
Harold Wilson closed more coal mines than Margaret Thatcher. This was, until last week, a little known fact. So obscure that it is amazing that all the commentariat remembered it at the same time. Obviously they were briefed by No. 10’s press operation desperately keen to repair the damage the PM has managed on a trip to Scotland.
But isn’t it strange that none of those writers seems to have drawn the obvious conclusion, that Harold Wilson was even more of a genius than Margaret Thatcher and did even more to save the planet?
I know, weird, but not unexpected. One of the most damaging aspects of the current political atmosphere is that Margaret Thatcher and all her policies are above criticism, all brilliant and all must be followed up with more of the same.
So even the current PM’s gaffes can be covered up by desperately applying a gloss of Thatcherite revisionism. It never fails.