THEY’RE RUNNING OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE’S QUOTES!

AFTER all the excitement had died down, when Theresa May the Dancing Queen had done what she had to do, I noted an old Margaret Thatcher line that had been slipped into her speech — the one about every Labour Party government “running out of other people’s money”.

It was a good line too, when first it was uttered, this critique of socialism in general. Even if it wasn’t strictly true, it seemed at least original. And even if it wasn’t actually original, its source was obscure enough to fool us into thinking that it was indeed Thatcher who had thought of this zinger all by herself.

Over time, it became a much-loved line for “conservatives”, until inevitably it became a cliche. And eventually after about 30 years of solid service it was just another of those low-level noises coming out of the political saloons.

Which in itself would not be a problem, if something else had not happened during that 30 years, which changed the meaning of that line somewhat — more than somewhat indeed, because we’re talking about the Great Crash of 2008 here, during which a certain section of the community started running out of other people’s money, until there was almost none of it left in the world.

And that section of the community, however they defined themselves, were not socialists. Indeed they were whatever is the opposite of socialists, they were casino capitalists and they were loving it until... well, until they started running out of other people’s money.

So the meaning of that line has flipped completely since the time of Thatcher. It can now be applied not to social welfare but to corporate welfare — and the kind of people who write speeches for politicians would know this.

Indeed, Theresa May herself, to give the woman her due, rattled through it leaving no room for raucous Tory laughter, seemingly even more anxious than usual to get it over with.

This is not about her, it is about the pathological cynicism of the everyday culture of politics, which has done much to enable the rise of the nationalist delinquents — the way that people who know better, will so often decide to do worse. It is about these “advisers” who are castigated for their ridiculous remuneration, but who are not castigated enough for taking these low roads, time after time.

To be clear (as they say): It is a disgrace for any intelligent person still to be using that “running out of other people’s money” line in the Thatcher sense of it.

But they know that.