A Labour backbencher posts a forty-second video blaming Thatcher for Britain's economic woes — and the internet applauds. It's a familiar routine. But what if almost every claim in it is demonstrably, provably wrong?
Maxwell Marlow of the Adam Smith Institute takes a scalpel to the mythology of economic nationalism — the idea that privatisation sold off Britain's birthright, that state ownership would have shielded us from the energy crisis, and that what this country needs now is to rebuild its industry behind tariff walls. One by one, the arguments collapse under scrutiny.
Britain's real economic weaknesses — the housing crisis, the collapsing North Sea, the strangled planning system — are not the product of too much market liberalism. They are the product of far too little. The solutions are not romantic, and they are not new. But they work.
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