quoting Gramsci's words that in these circumstances 'political questions are disguised as cultural ones'. ¹⁵

Nothing could make more clear the thorny question that continues to dog the issue of political ideology and 'class belonging'. Mercer's quotation from Gramsci, the darling of the anti-reductionist school, reveals to us a Gramsci who certainly takes ideology, culture and populism seriously, but ultimately as a cover for 'political' (for which in practice read class) politics. Here lies the basis for much of the continuing disagreement over the interpretation of Gramsci.

Stuart Hall's work on 'Thatcherism' as a political ideology is perhaps one of the most well-known attempts to use Laclau's insights in the context of a Gramscian interpretation of contemporary British politics. ¹⁶ One of the most accessible routes into this style of thinking might be to consider the theme of patriotism -- decisively 'captured' by Mrs Thatcher at the outbreak of the Falklands War as a Conservative party-political identification, which it had not previously been. The success of this has been striking, to the extent that the idea of a 'patriotic socialism' has become somewhat anomalous in Britain. We have for so long now heard the insistence on an identity between the government and the nation that, as Margaret Drabble recently remarked, we are actually surprised to encounter the old parliamentary expression 'Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition'.

Stuart Hall has analysed 'Thatcherism' as a political ideology which 'combines the resonant themes of organic Toryism -- nation, family, duty, authority, standards, traditionalism -- with the aggressive themes of a revived neo-liberalism -- self-interest, competitive individualism, anti-statism. ¹⁷ In his successive writings in this area Hall has elaborated these arguments, originally developed in advance of the election of the Thatcher government and addressed, historically, to the consequences for the Left of the collapsing 'post-war consensus' of British politics. In the earlier statements of his analysis, Hall concentrated on explaining how Thatcherism was not to be seen as some error of judgement on the part of the masses, who had fallen for a political right wing that did not represent their true interests, but should be seen in terms of ideological developments that had spoken to real conditions, experiences and contradictions in the lives of the people and then recast them in new terms. The term 'authoritarian populism' was developed to try and explore these ideas.

Thatcherism was 'hegemonic' in its intention (if not successful as such) in that its project was to restructure the whole texture of social life, to alter the entire formation of subjectivity and political identity, rather than simply to push through some economic policies. In Gramscian mode Stuart Hall summarized this political intention:

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