Three comments.

• Author: Elliott, Michael
• Position: Comments on article by Anthony Hartley in this issue, p. 36

Michael Elliott: ANTHONY HARTLEY'S essay is squarely within a school of modern British studies best called "Regrets Only." All the tell-tale signs are there: the supposed loss of purpose that followed the end of Empire, the lament about economic decline, the head-shaking over the Swinging Sixties, the disaffection with the grubbiness of Thatcherite capitalism. I agree with some of the analysis. I think, for example, that Hartley is right in thinking that the Empire brought out the best not just of the British establishment, but also of the middle-class in Scotland and the North of England. Sometimes Hartley is just wrong; the poll-tax which proved Margaret Thatcher's nemesis in 1990 was not so much "insufficiently prepared" as just mad. As a staff member in the Cabinet Office, I was part of a team working on local government reform in 1982; if you give yourselves eight years preparation on something, you should get it right.

More broadly, I think that Hartley misunderstands the recent economic history of Britain in an important way; and fails to specify the very difficult "strategic" choices that Britain must now face. He is confused--and he is not alone--about the central "problematic" of recent history, which, shortly put is this: what did Margaret Thatcher do, and what didn't she do?

It is no good complaining, as Hartley does, about "the entrepreneur, with all his disadvantages." For the "Regrets Only" crowd, the 1980s were full of ugliness and meretricity (personally I loved them). But the plain truth is that by 1979 Britain had become a society in which it was not respectable to be rich unless you had earned your money the old-fashioned way: by inheriting it. Mrs Thatcher's economic achievement--flawed but significant--was twofold. First, she espoused a set of supply-side policies which opened up a space for risk-taking behavior. Second, she changed the political climate so that those who worked in the private sector, men and women who were not particularly interested in politics but very interested in increasing the prosperity of their families, no longer felt despised.

The transformation of the British economy was (rather than "is," since I think it is just about over) wrenching and painful. Moreover, since Britain is just about the most open economy in the developed world, it tends to be "hypercyclical," doing very well in global booms (like the mid-1980s) and very badly in global busts (the early 1990s). But notwithstanding the pain and uncertainty, most commentators, I think, accept that the competitiveness of the British economy has fundamentally improved, with inflation just about controlled and productivity showing strong gains. That is Mrs. Thatcher's achievement.

But Mrs. Thatcher was much less surefooted in assessing what Britain's place was likely to be in the post-Cold War world. This failing goes beyond the common claim that Mrs. Thatcher was a "Euroskeptic." There are very good reasons to be skeptical of the European Union, not least its scandalous unconcern (which she would surely have challenged) for the fate of people and countries to its east. For the original...