Impacts of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair on Britain during and after Their Term in the Country - Case Study Example

Introduction This paper focuses on the impacts of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair on Britain during and after their term in the country. It seeks to carry out an analysis on the two prime ministers of Britain during their specific terms in power and their impacts on the country. The paper also looks at various aspects and parts of the country and the effects of the two prime ministers during the specific times in history (Foley 2002). For instance, it looks at the economics and politics of Britain and the changes they experienced during the terms of Tony and Margaret. It is also important to note that Tony and Margaret had an impact on the image of Britain to other countries in the world as at the time of their terms. The paper also analyzes their impacts by comparing and contrasting their impacts on the country during their years in power. Margaret was in power as Britain’s prime minister from the year 1979 to the year 1990. She made history by serving as a prime minister for the longest years. Tony was in power between 1997 and 2007. The two prime ministers had their achievements as they served in Britain and this paper analyzes them in details below. Margaret Thatcher She was in the Britain government as a prime minister for a period of about eleven years but before then she was a member of parliament for Finchley. Margaret was the first female prime minister of Britain. During her time in the British government as a member of parliament, Margaret acted as the first Lord of the Treasury. She was also the minister for the civil servant in Britain while still acting as the Member of Parliament for Finchley. Margaret was then appointed as the prime minister of Britain in May 4th 1979 until November 28th 1990. She resigned from this position (Foley 2002). In the international sector, she had an effect on the world economics because of her positive policies. Some of such policies were showing that capitalism and democracy can be the best forms of political economy in the world. She also had a great influence on Britain’s image in the United States because of her friendship with the then president of America, Ronald Reagan. Another impact Margaret had on the image of the country was the impact on the European Community (EU). She held a negotiation with the EU regarding the budget, commonly known as the European Community budget. She was able to vanquish communism in the economies of the world, therefore, improving how the world viewed Britain at that time. Thatcher is also famous for her contribution in ending the cold war in Britain. This had a great impact on the image of the country in the outside world. This is because the world viewed Britain as a great country because it was able to end the war (Davies 2010). Margaret positively impacted the defense ties with other countries like the United States especially in the Westland affair. Her rule also marked the deployment of nuclear forces of Britain. Margaret is famous for the popular poll tax that led to riots in Britain. Her policies also assisted the country to come of the recession situation. The poll tax led to an increase in the generation of local taxes. It is important to note that Thatcher led to an improvement of the country’s image abroad by her role in the recession. This is because after the country got out of the recession, it was in a good position in the outside world to borrow loans and get other grants (Reitan 2003). This is because the outside world had a better image of Britain than before, during the recession that the country was facing. She had a lot of impact on the politics of Britain because of her great influence on women regarding politics. Being the first female prime minister, she influenced more women to get into politics. During these years, she was popularly known as the real iron lady because of her strict rules, policies and her way of governance. There were several changes in Britain under the rule of Margaret in various sectors like the economic, culture, demographic and Britain’s image abroad. However, despite all her achievements she also had some failures on the economic and social aspects of Britain. Statistics show the changes that took place during her rule. To start with, she made history by being the first female prime minister in the country and not forgetting the changes she brought in Britain. Thatcher introduced the free market policies all in a bid to improve the economic situation of the country. Some of the policies under this include trade liberalization, introduction of privatization and deregulation. These policies ensured that Britain was free to trade with other countries abroad. Therefore, the image of UK was improved because the economy improved due to trade with other countries abroad. It also led to an increase in competition in industries which increased incentives in the country (Foley 2002). Thatcher led to an introduction of policies to reduce the number of settlements in the country from 1979 onwards. Research shows that the number reduced from 69,670 to around 53,200 by the year 1990. She led to a reduction in acceptances for settlements in the UK which improved the economy. This is unlike the current condition in UK where the net migration is higher than it was during her rule. It is also important to note that life expectancy in the country went up by three years for both men and women (Reitan 2003). Statistics show that the life expectancy for men was 70 while that for women was 76 in the year 1979. Unfortunately, this is not the case in the country today because the life expectancy for both genders has gone down. During her rule, Britain faced two great economic recessions in the 1980s. This had a similar negative impact on the Gross Domestic Product of Britain. The boom of 1980s could not salvage the economic situation of the country by a great percentage. However, she struggled with the economy of UK in the 1980s by improving it by about 22%. Thatcher also had an effect on the manufacturing sector in the country because it declined (Davies 2010). In 1970, the rate of manufacturing in the economy was 21%. This rate reduced by the year 1979 to a rate of 17% and there was still a reduction during her rule. By the time she was leaving office, the rate was down to 15.1%. Her reign also marked an increase in the number of employment in the public sector. The rate of employment in the public sector by the year 1990 was 23.3%. The spending levels during her reign also reduced. Margaret’s rule had an impact on the interest rates and house prices in the economy. The economy at her time faced rise in house prices more so for the council houses sales. Interest rates were also on the rise to about 17% during Margaret’s rule. Poverty level in the country was on the rise by the year 1990. The figures were up to 22.3% by 1990 from the previous levels of 13.4% in 1979. This led to increase in inequality among citizens in Britain. Statistics from the gini coefficient of measuring inequality indicates that the score went up to 0.339 by 1990. Thatcher is also popular for her negative impact on the family lives of people in the UK during her rule. It is during her term that the country saw the stop of the traditional kinship (Foley 2002) . Her rule marked an increase in the divorce cases among married couples. Statistics show that divorce rates went up to 14 in every 1000 married couples in the year 1985. This led to an increase in the number of children being born outside marriage to 29% by 1990. Comparison between Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher The two prime ministers have several similarities especially in the field of economics of Britain and the reforms they made. Both Tony and Margaret had the same aim of helping citizens in the UK. They both made policies aimed at bringing Britain to the new millennium (Collins 2005). Both led to an improvement of the country’s economy and made Britain a great world power as it is today. The two applied similar approaches in their governance. Both Tony and Thatcher believed and applied the policy of trade unions for worker in Britain during their reigns with the aim of improving working conditions for workers. Just like Tony, Thatcher had the ability to deal with crises in Britain. For instance, Tony dealt with the wars in Afghanistan and Thatcher with the cold war (Henderson 2006). Tony Blair Antony Charles Lynton Blair, a member of the Labor party served as a British prime minister from 1997 to June 2007. He managed to serve several consecutive terms. He won three consecutive elections under the labor party ticket which makes him exceptional. One of his major reforms was advocating for the independence of each citizen in Britain which some criticized greatly citing it to be capitalism adding that he should have encouraged socialism instead. During his era, he introduced several favorable policies that clearly changed Britain for the better. They include the minimum wage and freedom of information acts (Hinman 2009). His rein saw money spent on social services increase considerably. He tried by all means to reduce eradicate poverty between 2001 and 2005. Public expenditure was seen to rise by 4.8%. Transport expenditure rose by 8.5%, health by 8.2%, and education by 5.4%. The efforts that he directed to eradication of poverty bore fruits as poverty reduced by 50%. Value added tax on fuel was greatly reduced. Working tax credit and child tax credit were introduced by him all in a bid to eradicate poverty. He played a major role in conservation of the environment. In 1997, he made an appeal to the industrialized nations to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gasses. In 2003, during the United States Congress, he stood up and encouraged all nations to do their level best to reduce carbon emissions. Despite his major campaigns for a `greener world`, critics claim that he did not do much in his very own country (Blair 2004). They claim that only 3% of energy is from renewable sources unlike the 10% he had claimed. Tony allowed a press conference once a month that gave journalist an opportunity to follow up the state of the country and thus could easily make comprehensive reports to be presented to the citizens. He made history by being the first ever prime minister to send British troops five times for peace keeping missions. They were sent to Kosovo, Sierra Leon and Afghanistan. Blair himself was directly involved in trying to advocate for peace in warring nations a good example being the Kosovo war where they had solely relied on air strikes. He introduced payment of tuition money in universities and introduced several market reforms as well as social services (Rentoul 2001). He made history by being the first prime minister in the 20th century who fathered a child in office. His contribution during the formation of the Good Friday Agreement in the Northern Ireland which helped to restore peace after 30 years gave him great recognition internationally. He is well known for his commitment to business activities. Despite being the youngest ever prime minister, he faced major critics for his involvement with media manipulation. He had a great impact on the economy of Britain. He was able to curb unemployment rate by reducing it to below 6% between 1998 to 2007.in 2007, Britain had the highest per capita among the G7 countries and a high consumer price index of more than 3% (Hinman 2009). During his rein, the country had a reduced budget deficit. Its public debt also reduced considerably. Tony lacked public confidence with reference to official statistics due to the constitution that they had produced that regulated professional standards which the government was not supposed to interfere with, but had been a responsibility of independent statistics commission. It was thought by many that the ministers were behind all this. Expenditure on education increased from 4.9% in 1997 to 5.6% in 2007. This was a major impact that can be cited from the entire rein of Tony. Also there was a major increase in the number of primary, secondary, and special education teachers. The number of students who were able to score 5 A to C grades increased from 5.9% in 1997 to 65.3% in 2008. While the total of Advanced level passes rose from 87.2%to 97.2%. There was a considerable increase of about 40% on the amount of money spent on police force between 1998 and 2008. There was a great decrease on the overall crime by the time Blair was done with his term as a prime minister in Britain. The number of migrants in 1997 was about 300 thousand. By 2007, this number had increased to 600 thousand. Statistics stated that by 2007, 10% of the country`s population consisted of foreign born persons. Though, some do not think that the immigrants have any positive impact on the inhabitants. There has been an increase in the expenditure of the national health services from 41.3 billion Euros in 1999 to 102.7 billion Euros in 2009. More qualified doctors have been employed and have henceforth increased from 89,619 in 1997 to 128,210 in 2007. The number of qualified nurses has also increased from 318,856 to 399,597. This has led to reduction of the length of time that a patient has to wait for an appointment (Blair 2004). Mr. Blair was once an enthusiast for membership of the euro which had been by then undergoing crisis. His final year in office was difficult for Tony especially because he was going through a lot of critics and people pointing accusing fingers on him. People were blaming him for the Iraq war among other accusations. The accusations stated that ha had deliberately lied to the parliament of his time on his going for war in Iraq (Rentoul 2001). His association with the media was also part of the main accusations, a scandal the media called `cash for honors`. This, did not however, stop him from pursuing what he termed as an incomplete agenda. He therefore went ahead with his fulfillment of the pending legislative proposals on education, health, immigration, identity cards and terrorism. It is by this time that Blair did not have public confidence in statistics that are official. The constitution of Britain was a non-statutory framework. This caused the regulation of professional standards to be purely up to a statistics commission which was to be purely independent. People suspected that the statistics were being controlled by ministers who manipulated them (Collins 2005). Briton`s economy grew considerably as their incomes increased by 18%. Blair did not increase income tax in the first term though the employee`s rate had been increased. There was a great expansion of the welfare of the state. He greatly backed up the United States foreign policy. This is evidenced by the fact that he took part in the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. The twenty seventh day of June year 2007 surely marks an unforgettable day for Tony Blair and Britain as a whole as this was the day he resigned from being the prime minister of Britain (Collins 2005). Differences between Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher Despite the fact that Tony and Margaret had similarities, they also had great differences during their respective reigns. One of the greatest differences was the manner in which they viewed government intervention in the country’s economy. Margaret believes strongly in laissez-faire unlike Tony who believes in regulation of the economy. This is evident in the kind of policies that the two make in relation to the economy. Another major difference is the kind of policies they applied in their governance. Tony used the policy of increasing taxes in the economy, while Thatcher reduced the taxes. Another of their differences is that Blair’s leadership style was distinctive while that of Thatcher was not. For instance, Tony was comfortable with experimenting different leadership styles unlike Thatcher who did not like experimenting. Unlike Margaret, Blair could easily apologize to the public in case he made a mistake (Collins 2005). Conclusion The two prime ministers above had both positive and negative impacts on Britain during the number of years they served in the seat. Experts analyze the reigns of Tony and Margaret from different angles as explained above with the aim of finding out the impacts they had on Britain and its image abroad. There are both critics and acceptance for the kind of work and role played by the two prime ministers of the UK from various experts. However, it is important to note that each of the two had different roles to play on improving the state of Britain. The situation that Britain is today is attributed in one way or another to the works of Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher (Henderson 2006). This includes both their failures and achievements during their reigns. Future leaders should also learn from their failures. The country should, therefore, not dwell on the failures of Blair and Thatcher. Rather, both leaders and citizens in Britain should concentrate on improving the current state in the country. It is also essential that they concentrate on keeping up with the good legacy that the two leaders left behind, rather than dragging the country behind and lowering its political, economic status and its image abroad. This means that the coming leaders in similar positions should aim at improving the state of the country from where Tony Blair and Magarey Thatcher left. For instance, both prime ministers improved the economic status in the UK. They also had their own failures while serving in the government. For instance, during the rule of Tony there was an increase in the number of people migrating into the country, unlike in the reign of Thatcher. They therefore, deserve credit because at some point they led to an improvement in various aspects of the country. References Beckett, C. (2006): Thatcher: Haus Publishing: Pg. 99-134. Berlinski, C. 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