Cross-party consensus was once called Butskellism. What do we call it when even Rachel Reeves and Jeremy Hunt agree?
Back in the 1950s, a term was coined to describe the consensus that had allegedly emerged over the way to run the economy in the postwar world. An amalgam of the names of two chancellors of the exchequer – Rab Butler for the Tories and Hugh Gaitskell for Labour – it became known as Butskellism.
Dispute has raged ever since over whether there was any such thing, yet while it is true that the two main parties had their differences – often serious ones – on certain broad principles they did agree: a mixed economy, the permanence of the welfare state and the need to maintain full employment.
