Britain needs more Thatcherism, not less, argues free-market think tank

Emma Revell, external affairs director at the Centre for Policy Studies, has argued that Britain's economic difficulties result from insufficient Thatcherism rather than its excess. Writing in City AM, she contends that Andy Burnham and the British left misuse Margaret Thatcher as a convenient bogeyman for problems that predate her premiership and persist because her reforms were never fully consolidated.

Revell reminds readers that Thatcher inherited a country humbled by an IMF bailout in 1976, paralysed by the Winter of Discontent and losing more working days to strikes than any European neighbour. Manufacturing productivity was the lowest in the G7. The post-war consensus Burnham evokes, she writes, was a slow-motion bankruptcy propped up by subsidies paid for by workers.

Deindustrialisation was structural, not political

Revell argues that the decline of heavy industry in the 1970s and 1980s hit every advanced economy, driven by technology, global competition and rising wages. Thatcher ended the practice of pouring taxpayer money into loss-making sectors, a move that was painful but prevented a subsidised decline future generations would have funded. The result was a pivot toward services and high-value industry, making London a global finance capital and lifting manufacturing productivity to the G7 lead.

Privatisation delivered investment, not exploitation

On water, Revell counters Burnham's claim that privatisation serves shareholders at bill-payers' expense. She says privatised utilities secured consistently higher infrastructure investment, at times outspending every other European country, because they could raise capital without competing for Treasury funds. Regulatory constraints on bill increases, not private ownership, are blamed for recent underinvestment. The Thames Water crisis illustrates the tension between regulated returns and the capital needed for network upgrades.

Share sales in BT and the Right to Buy policy are described as the largest transfer of capital and property to ordinary Britons in modern history. Revell declares her affiliation with the Centre for Policy Studies, founded by Thatcher and Keith Joseph in 1974, but argues the think tank's ideas rescued a bankrupt country once they reached power.

Decline is a choice

Revell warns that wealth taxes, price controls and the highest peacetime tax burden signal a return to the pre-1979 consensus. She concludes that Britain in 2026 is not suffering from too much Thatcherism but from the absence of it since she left Downing Street.