But that is now common ground in the Government whose commitments ineluctably outrun its income

But that is now common ground in the Government, whose commitments ineluctably outrun its income. Though the poor still enjoy vociferous support on Labour back benches and the churches - when not otherwise engaged - they command less votes than most claimant groups.Neither Field nor his colleagues - nor, for that matter, the Tories - have thought the unthinkable to the point of moving beyond institutional concepts and measures, eg systems of welfare-payments, fraud-prevention and provision of work opportunities, to the nature of the welfariat, what Marx dubbed the "lumpenproletariat", and British reformers called "the submerged tenth". Not one in 20 of those who hail him could tell you what his thoughts actually are, but that is largely irrelevant: that he is credited with thinking the unthinkable and embattled with his colleagues is recommendation enough.A few years ago, he was well in advance of his comrades, who in opposition promised the moon, in recognising that curing poverty was not simply achievable by spending more money. Like Edward Heath in his day, they eschew a self-critical view of their failed policies and blame the voting public.But politics abhors a vacuum The prophet's mantle descended briefly on Frank Field. This time round, the defeated Tories have no Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher (or, dare I say it, Alfred Sherman) to raise the standard of intellectual revolt. The born-again messianism of the Seventies gave way to the tired, defensive jacks in office of the Nineties.

At the time, we had plenty of unthinkable questions in our war chest. Does all evidence, as well as logic, not question the certainty that transport subsidies diminish congestion and pollution and are socially progressive? Is a statutory school leaving age of 16 sustainable?; Have rent control, slum clearance, council housing and town and country planning not done more harm than good, particularly to those strata in whose name they were undertaken? Can the NHS conceivably survive in the long term?Once it ceased to question the unquestioned and think the unthinkable, Thatcherism lacked the elixir needed to counter the onset of political mortality The rest is history. This indicates the resistance of established ways to critical thought, just as bacteria survive antibiotics.After the 1983 election (which was much less of a victory than it appeared at first sight, since it did not increase the Conservatives' share of the poll even when faced by Foot's depleted ranks), the CPS was de-Shermanised to bring thinking the unthinkable, which a complacent Government was beginning to find irksome, to an end. The syndrome has survived the Tories' consequent misadventures and fall. On the BBC's Newsnight this week, a trades union leader, John Edmonds, complained that whereas the late John Smith, when shadow Chancellor, had excoriated the Government's unique dependence on interest-rate policy as a "one golf club" policy, Gordon Brown was still practicing it.

But in 1979, the new Government continued the neo-Keynsian monetary squeeze imposed by Denis Healey at the IMF's behest in 1976, with even greater intensity and Friedmanite rhetoric. Paradoxically, whereas the defeats of 1974 generated the radical tide of Joseph-Thatcherism, the victories of 1975, 1979 and 1983 dissipated it, till only the grin remained.At the CPS, I had a wonderful "unthinkable" in our locker. Was the economy really amenable to control through manipulation of the interest rate or money supply, as every government had believed, and every opposition queried since the late Forties? Keith Joseph had said "No!" in his Monetarism is not Enough, with a commendatory foreword by Thatcher. Clearly, the mood was there, awaiting arousal.He turned to me for help since I had drafted some radical speeches and articles for him in 1969-70 before election victory swallowed him alive in the DHSS. Once again, I persuaded him to reach out to the party's mood of frustration by a radical analysis of defeat What was soon to be known as "Thatcherism" was born.