Thatcher's Law
THE idea of white-collar recession is no more than dimly recognised, but we need to adjust to it, because it is here, and will plainly get worse, and will have unfamiliar consequences. For instance: Roseland is the country of heavy borrowers, mostly on mortgage. What is going to service all those mortgages? What will happen to Roselanders who cannot afford either to sell or to stay put? How many of them will face bankruptcy? What are the political consequences of white collar recession? I had a theory to explain Margaret Thatch- er's success in timing her general elections. She would call them, I argued, when the employed were still in the majority. That was all right in a blue-collar recession, when those out of work might not have voted for her anyway. This one is different. And what — apart, of course, from the long overdue cuts in interests rates — can ministers do about it? I was touched to see the Government come back to the market with a new gilt-edged stock, on tap for buyers — a little exercise in pump-priming for the City, a little business put in the way of the surviving gilt-edged dealers, to revive their rusty skills. (It is interesting work, and my forebears have been en- gaged in it . . .) Next, as I say, a City visit from a ministerial showman (not, please, David Mellor) in a bowler hat. It is true that bowler hats are no longer City uni- form, any more than flat hats were uniform in the North-East. In gesture politics, it is the thought that matters.
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