Rachel Reeves is no Thatcher and won't take us forwards

RACHEL Reeves this week pulled off a remarkable political trick. The Shadow Chancellor managed to à convince some people she is the heir to Margaret Thatcher, promising a "decade of renewal" like the one Britain experienced after hitting rock bottom in the late 1970s.

- Ross Clark

Yet, paradoxically, she teased policies which promise to achieve the exact opposite of what the former Tory PM achieved. 

Reeves can be forgiven for not having the sharpest memories of the 1980s. Born in the midst of the Winter of Discontent in February 1979, she was three months old when Mrs Thatcher won power.

But the economist by training must surely know what reforms Thatcher enacted: clipping the wings of trade unions who had inflicted misery on the public, and pushing Jim Callaghan's hapless Government out of power, she transformed the fortunes of the UK economy.

The closed shop was outlawed, along with secondary picketing in other industries. Indeed, the decade's endless strikes had been dubbed "the British disease", but by the end of Thatcher's run, unions were a shadow of their former selves.

SO WHAT are Reeves and her proposed government planning to do if they win this year's general election? Repeal every single piece of trade union legislation introduced since 2010 - if she honours the speech she gave on Tuesday. That would mean ending a current law requiring minimum service levels on strike days in public services.