Boris Johnson invokes Thatcher spirit with greed is good speech:
London mayor calls for return of selective schools in bid for Tory right's support.

Boris Johnson conveyed a speech where he addressed the centre for policy studies in London in a speech titled what would Maggie do today? He wanted to see how Thatcher invokes spirit with greed and how that helps society in anyway. This evaluation task will show you what views he has shown towards certain topics

Boris Johnson launched a bold bid to claim the mantle of Margret Thatcher by saying that inequality is essential to fostering the spirit of envy as well as seeing greed as a valuable spur to economic activity. We can evaluate this point and say that the idea of greed would be seen as a Marxist viewpoint which can allow us to draw up assumptions that Boris Johnson is a Marxist. Marxists would see ‘greed as a value to spur economic growth’ as beneficial for them as that is what they aim to do, keep the money and capital for themselves so that their own economic growth can be stronger as well as keeping them in the highest social bracket being the upper class. The bourgeoisie would do this by making the proletariat work long hour and in return get the least possible wages. Meanwhile the proletariat have no choice but to comply with what is being said by the bourgeoisie as they need the wages so that they can continue to live life and attain the basic needs. However a feminist would see the idea of greed and maintaining economic growth as a positive, but only for men. The fact that Margret Thatcher has been deceased, women may feel that there has been a sense of lost hope as men will take the jobs which acquire the skills.

In addition, Boris Johnson touched on the idea that there should be a ‘return of a form of grammar schools’. This would mean that the best students would be ‘cream-skimmed’ and be put in a selective school with others who are also in the same learning bracket. The idea of this would baffle many, but also make certain individuals happy and more beneficial for them. New right (conservative) sociologist would say that this will help to breed the best possible students within the education system as they will be the ones who will be taking the best jobs such as mayors, MP’s and doctors for example. Bartlett& Le Grand brought up the idea of cream- skimming and we can say that certain schools would only get the brightest of students while other schools would sink as they would be getting the least able which will lead to poor examination results. This can bring up the idea of inequality as there would be