The Prime Minister’s invention of a new energy policy on the spur of the moment, which even his own office cannot explain, simply serves to underline the abject and final failure of the Thatcher doctrine of mindless privatisation of utilities and blind faith in the equilibrium of free unfettered markets.
Sir Geoffrey Howe, as he then was, wowed a Tory conference at the height of the Iron Lady’s ascendancy over British politics, by describing socialism and communism as not isms but wasms. By the same measure, Thatcherism is itself becoming a wasm. The problem with all these doctrines is they have an element of validity, but their disciples push them too far. Thatcher faced a rampant and irrational trade union movement destroying the competitiveness of British manufacturing, and a burgeoning State, weighed down by the losses of all its many enterprises from coal to railways to British Leyland. Socialism had lost its way and was losing money big time. Thatcher transformed the country with a new economic model based on the dominance of markets, privatisation, regulators and quangos, which seemed, on the face of it, to work better.
Unfortunately, just like socialism before it, Thatcherism was allowed to go to extremes, so that eventually the economic model imploded, following mismanagement by New Labour and because of selfishness, greed and excess. It is now clear that the energy industry is dysfunctional, monstrously expensive to both private consumers and business, exploited by speculators and not up to the job. There is a dire warning of power cuts, yes back to the three day week of the Heath government, in little more than two years, unless something drastic is done. This comes on top of mayhem in banking, chaos in the franchising of railways and the worst housing shortage since the aftermath of the blitz. Add to that a country more in debt per head of population than almost any other and you should need little persuading that all is not well.
Yet there are some signs that the people, independently of the politicians who lead them with such incompetence, have taken responsibility to get to a better place. Employment is at a record high, unemployment is falling and retail sales are up. Not for the first time in history may the British nation far outshine its leaders.
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