No exaggeration - a critically pivotal moment has occurred in British politics:

[Joe Chi Minh]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/03/14/david-cameron-lay-credit-crunch-blame-on-us-tories-115875-21196777/

To me it's really weird that the unequivocal confession should have come from a Tory. But then, Brown and Blair were Thatcher lick-spittles, which is why they've tried to canonise her. A statue of her now graces the Houses of Parliament (when the most obvious candidate for one is Aneurin Bevan), and Brown is still anxious to organise a state-funeral for her.

It's another version of the old trick of promoting people who bring shame and disgrace on their political patrons. "Kicking them upstairs" (to the Lords) is the term normally used here; a kind of supercharged pardon, in which by association they can not only be "let off the hook", but actually have their image burnished a little by the same association whereby they were, themsleves, actually "guilty as charged" and disgraced.

It should make it more difficult, to say the least, for Brown to remove the spittle from his face. "Lip-stick on a pig" won't be an option any more.

[LeftishBrit]

1. I doubt that it's a pivotal moment

Cameron practically defines the term 'weathercock' and always did. At least a weathercock is preferable to an RW ideologue like Thatcher.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. No. I think you are wrong. Can you imagine a Republican politician

admitting that Reagan and his own party are more to blame than anyone (even Wild Bill...!) for this economic mess, with his utterly, utterly irreponsible deregulation? Oh, sorry. I believe the term is, "light-touch regulation". Sounds so much more civilised, doesn't it?

In fact, until now, I'd thought the Tories didn't have the remotest chance of winning the next general election, despite the loony media hoo-ha. There does seem something of the weather-cock about him, but he's young and almost certainly not "fully-formed" yet. It took Churchill a while to grow out of the worst of his right-wing extremism. Maybe he really could become a one-nation Tory, a budding Rooselvelt. Trouble is he would have no power-base.

Politically, we seem to be a very degenerate nation, though the majority of the electorate have never voted for the riff-raff who've governed the country since 1980. NuLab have been repeatedly voted to power under our, effectively, two-party system, because they are not Thatcher's party - despite their very best endeavours.

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. He still blames Labour since 1997 more than anyone

He didn't say the Thatcher or Major governments are specifically to blame for anything; just that there have been 'weaknesses' 'for decades':

I take a different view - our banking system is not separate from our economy, it is a reflection of it. The unsustainable debts in our banks are a reflection of unsustainable debts in our households, our companies and our government. But if I'm honest, I have to admit that we - the Conservative Party - didn't see this as early as we could have. I believe we were - and still are - right to focus on fixing our broken society... because unless we get to grips with educational failure, welfare dependency and family breakdown, then not just our quality of life but our standard of living will always be poorer than it could be... as we pay, through higher taxes and bigger government, the costs of social failure.

I believe we were right, as we did back in 2006, to warn about rising levels of personal debt. And I believe we were right, as we did at the last election and through to today, to consistently warn about the scale of the Government debt crisis. But do I believe we did enough to warn about the rising levels of corporate debt, banking debt and borrowing from abroad? No. And there are other areas of economic policy where I look back now and think we would have done it differently if we had the time again. For example, while we warned that it was wrong and complacent to claim that boom and bust had been abolished... we based our plans on the hope that economic growth would continue.

All parties signed up to this cosy economic consensus, including the Liberal Democrats, whose spending plans have tended to be the largest of them all. It is only by being honest about the past that we can get things right for the future. So we need to recognise that our economy, as well as our society, is broken - and we should have said so sooner. But if we're honest, we must also recognise that some of our economic difficulties today relate not only to what has happened in the last ten years, but also to certain fundamental weaknesses that have been there for decades.

In recent years these fundamental British economic weaknesses have actually been getting worse rather than better, but they have been masked by easy money and economic growth. It's only when the tide of debt-fuelled growth recedes that the rocks underneath are revealed. Well the tide is out now, and the rocks all too visible. We as a country can't get away with it any more.
...
And just as I have taken on this Government for overburdening our businesses with all their regulations in the past decade...I will take on anyone who tries to use this financial crisis to argue for more regulation of our small businesses. But the idea that we should apply these principles to every part of the economy with the same passion and verve - including our banks - is wrong.

In a free market, businesses succeed and businesses fail - but the market in which they operate would not even exist if the whole banking system fails. The purpose banks serve and the function they have - to collect savings and direct them into profitable investments - means that they underpin our whole economy. So unless we want our economic lights to go out, it's right and it's proper that our banks are properly regulated by an organisation with the wherewithal, discretion, common sense, power and influence to keep them in check.

This, of course, was the case up until 1997 - when Gordon Brown took the disastrous decision to remove from the Bank of England its historic ability to ensure that banking credit was kept within responsible limits... and created a whole institution - the FSA - to regulate banks' products, processes and procedures.

It wasn't light touch regulation - it was wrong touch regulation. It failed to understand this central insight in financial markets: That while much of the time market discipline ensures that banks act responsibly and control their risks, it is precisely when that market discipline breaks down - as it did over the past decade - that we need regulatory discipline strong enough to keep banks responsible.

The height of the boom is precisely when financial regulation is most important. That is why a year ago we put forward proposals to make sure our regulators call time on debt. I'm delighted this is on the G20 agenda, to try to get a global agreement. But even without international action, here we will introduce a new Debt Responsibility Mechanism, instructing the Bank of England to write regularly to the regulator, setting out its concerns about the sustainability of the level of debt in the economy. We are considering whether this job is best done by folding the regulator back into the Bank of England. And we will ensure that wherever it is situated, the regulator has the teeth to do its job by giving it the people it needs - paid for by an increased levy on the City.

http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/03/David_Cameron_We_will_make_the_hard_long_term_decisions_for_this_country.aspx

No, I don't think this is anything special - he's saying "yes, we should have done some things differently, and we should have been harder on Brown, because it was under him as Chancellor that things got really bad". That's nothing amazing for a politician to do.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. Evidently, you are absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong. I couldn't find

any reference to either Thatcher or Major in the text of the speech that you linked. There seems no reason to believe that it is not a report of the full speech.

Even with my exceptionally low opinion of our press (and it has to be abysmal to be exceptional), I find it extraordinary and pathetic that the Mirror columnist should have so blatantly misreported it. Thanks for the correction. I must now reluctantly "unhearten" myself. Such simple honesty on such an elementary level by any of our politicians was really was too much to expect.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. I wouldn't say you were wrong - perhaps over-optimistic?

but I agree with you the Mirror's reporting was rather biased; and I had to hunt to get the full speech - I'm sure I've been misled by sloppy reporting many times as well.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Thank you, Muriel, but that seems worse than sloppy reporting to me.

The role of Thatcher and Major in this debacle was so seminal that dishonestly citing their names in that way is pathetic. Why don't they publish articles describing their roles and, indeed, the contemptible complicity of the press, including themselves, in it all.

If they really felt for the people of this country like the Daily Mirror used to do in its early post-WWII years, as Labour Party-supporters (Socialists), I might have found it just a little more palatable. But I fear it is its support of NuLab that has prompted them.