Why the Poll Tax Riots and then Major's election success should serve as a warning for a less than vocal Labour Party...

I'm old enough, and ugly enough - as they say, to have lived through the last Tory administration.  I witnessed as Margaret Thatcher's unpopularity reached a thrilling climax in March 1990 when an estimated 250,000 people took to the streets of London in protest of her brutally unfair poll tax which had replaced the traditional rates system.

The riots are now famous of course for being instrumental in bringing about Thatcher's slow and painful political demise, she was finally booted out of Downing Street in November 1990.  John Major was her successor...

Like most Labour Party supporters, I believed the Conservatives would lose the 1992 general election.  Thatcher had been more than just upopular, she was hated and remains hated to this day despite being out of the limelight for 20 years.  Margaret Thatcher was far more despised than Cameron ever could be. 

John Major looked sure to face defeat but psychologists running his now famous focus groups had told him he could be quietly confident, and sure enough on April 9th 1992 he secured a 4th victory for the Tories against, what seemed to be, all the odds............


This Coalition's programme of harsh austerity measures, seeking mainly to punish the poor is arguably as unpopular as Margaret Thatcher's agenda.  The Conservative and Lib Dems Welfare Reform Bill is as extreme and sadistic as the Poll Tax was, and maybe a quarter of a million people could be encouraged to march on Whitehall to make their voices heard.

But Labour MPs cannot continue to sit on their hands and complacently assume David Cameron is already throwing the 2015 general election away.  We're fairly sure Cameron won't be leading the Tories then anyway, most people share the view that it'll probably be Boris Johnson.  Do Labour think Boris Johnson is less appealing than John Major was back in 1992?

Everything in politics these days is played out on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and rolling news and that irritating Skycopter which buzzes over the London skyline like a particularly persistent  wasp.  Boris Johnson with his wacky one-liners and bizarre bedhead barnet is made for this world.. Young voters are naive enough to lap him up and you can be sure their iPhones will be bombared with vote B-J messages, in all probability paid for by Rupert Murdoch.

The Shadow Cabinet need to replay 1990 and then 1992 and have a long hard think!! But please, not too long!