Thatcherite think tank argues Britain needs more reform, not less

The Centre for Policy Studies has published a forceful rebuttal to the Labour government's characterisation of the past four decades as a failed experiment in neoliberalism. In an article for City AM, the think tank's external affairs director Emma Revell argues that Britain's current economic difficulties stem from a retreat from Margaret Thatcher's reforms rather than their excess.

The intervention comes as Andy Burnham, a senior Labour figure, has blamed the 1980s for centralising political power and privatising economic power at the expense of working people. Revell contends this narrative inverts the historical record. She notes 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.

Deindustrialisation and the limits of state support

Revell acknowledges the pain of pit and factory closures but argues deindustrialisation was a structural shift hitting every advanced economy, driven by technology, global competition and rising wages. She contends that Thatcher's decision to end subsidies to loss-making industries prevented a "subsidised decline for which future generations would pick up the tab." Manufacturing productivity, the lowest in the G7 in 1979, became the highest, while the economy pivoted toward services and high-value industry, creating the financial services sector that now generates a significant share of GDP.

Privatisation and asset ownership

On water privatisation, Revell disputes the claim that it serves only private interests. She cites consistently higher infrastructure investment, at times exceeding every other European country, enabled by access to capital markets rather than competing for Treasury funding. Regulatory constraints on bill increases, she argues, are the cause of recent underinvestment. The sell-offs of BT shares and the Right to Buy policy are described as "the largest transfer of capital and property to ordinary Brits in modern history."

Current trajectory

Revell warns that state spending now sits at around 45 per cent of GDP, up from 35 per cent when Tony Blair took office, with the highest peacetime tax burden and increasing difficulty building infrastructure. Wealth taxes and price controls are back on the agenda. The think tank, founded by Thatcher and Keith Joseph in 1974, maintains that decline is a choice, and that Britain has been choosing it by abandoning the reform agenda.