Letters: David Redshaw is staggered by Keir Starmer’s admiration for her, Brian Hughes says her government created the illusion of an economic miracle, while Charles EL Gilman disputes her total hostility to the EU
Margaret Thatcher set Britain’s decline in motion – so why can’t politics exorcise her ghost?, 12 AprilThe biggest burst of entrepreneurship came in the pre-Thatcher 1960s. The young Turks who burst into the music industry through the side door. The fashion revolution in Carnaby Street and Kings Road. The new magazines, including the very first glossy women’s rights publication. And, sneering rightwingers might note, I don’t think there was the proverbial politics of envy.
The only entrepreneurial activity Thatcher let loose was in the late 1980s when, having devastated the northern industries, she and Nigel Lawson devised a way of kickstarting the economy by deregulating the financial sector and offering people criminally stupid amounts of credit – a gambit that predictably went pop in 1990 and contributed to her demise. Let’s have less Daily Mail mythology and more accurate history please, Keir.
It did the same with North Sea oil revenues. Norway was the only other European country to have the great good fortune to become self-sufficient in the black gold. It used the rewards to improve its infrastructure and to build up a fund to protect against future economic problems. The Thatcher government frittered ours away just as it had when selling our national assets.
Now instead the Tories are building up massive public debts, in effect stealing from future taxpayers. It’s no surprise that we boomers are often despised for our lucky lives. In the 1980s, thanks to Thatcher and her acolytes, we stole from previous generations; the public companies we sold had been built up using money from millions of customers and taxpayers. Now we are in effect doing it to generations younger than ours.
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