John Redwood Background
I first met Sir Keith Joseph at All Souls when I was first elected a fellow at 21. He was a distinguished fellow and a Cabinet Minister in the Heath government. I dared to tell him I thought the government’s lurch to price and income controls, its inflationary monetary policy and ill judged dispute with the miners would mean losing the election. Keith took my insubordination well whilst assuring me they were bound to win. The government did not understand market economics or how people felt. When the Conservatives asked the question Who governs? over the miners strike, the people responded “Not you”. The miners had a good case for a pay rise given the general inflation and the OPEC induced oil price surge.
After the election defeat Keith generously remembered my worries. He saw the damage caused by the policies they had followed and embarked on a radical rethink. With Margaret Thatcher he set up the CPS to champion the new ideas. He appointed me to advise the public spending and Treasury Committee of the Conservative Party in Opposition. Setting future budgets and economic policy was central to the rethink of Conservative values, aims and policies which he chaired. I took to them a way out of the financial problems they would inherit Faced with sky high taxes, excessive spending and borrowing I proposed denationalising many public sector trading enterprises to remove their capital budgets and losses from the state budget and to bring in receipts to the Treasury. Keith asked me to chair a committee on denationalisation at the CPS . The CPS gave me plenty of encouragement as together we set out detailed plans for a private future for most nationalised industries. I also chaired seminars for Nationalised Industry chairmen to prepare them for ways of raising more money and having access to private sector funds for the large modernisation programmes many of them needed. In 1983 Margaret Thatcher appointed me to help her drive through a much enlarged privatisation programme in Downing Street. I continued to advise and press for more sales as Head of the Policy Unit and then as an MP and Minister.
The case for privatisation
It seemed obvious in the mid 1970s looking at poor technically backward bankrupt U.K. seeking loans from the IMF that we needed big changes. As an investment analyst I looked enviously at large profitable competitive US companies in important sectors like telecoms and energy and saw how far ahead of our nationalised industries they were.
The U.K. state owned and ran the railways, the postal and phone systems, gas , electricity, coal, shipbuilding, aero engines, steel, weapons manufacture, some car assembly, some oil, water and waste water, refuse collection and much else. Many of these industries were starved of capital investment, made major strategic misjudgements and often generated losses. They added to state deficits and the overall state debt burden. Why not free the state of the heavy financial demands and free the businesses of the heavy hand of state control?
I set out in books and articles how the UK’s post war big nationalisations like coal,rail and steel had led to many lost jobs, to large losses for taxpayers, and higher prices for customers. Privatisation could lift much of the financial burden, cut the chances of job loss and improve the quality and value for money of the goods and services.
As soon as industry was privatised all its investment spending dropped out of the state budget. No longer was an improved telephone exchange or a renewed blast furnace competing with money for the NHS. The industries could increase their investment if they could satisfy markets it was a profitable venture.
Out of state control their losses no longer fell to taxpayers to meet. In the private sector they were more likely to be profitable so they would contribute more by way of business tax. The sale itself would generate a one off capital receipt which appeared as negative public spending in government accounts.
The performance of privatised industries usually improved substantially after sale. Managers were paid bigger bonuses for better results. Many employees became shareholders or were given bonuses to align their interests with success of the company.
As the state privatised it could introduce competition into monopoly services. Competition is the best regulator. As many critics of privatisation feared bad conduct once in private ownership the larger monopolistic businesses also could be given industry specific regulators to preserve services or features people claimed to value.
The battle of ideas in the 1970 s
Most establishment and academic opinion in the 1970s believed the great nationalisations of the mid century were the right way to proceed. There was little analysis of them as trading businesses and an unwillingness to contrast them with private enterprise comparators in the USA. I sought with the CPS and others to set out just what had gone wrong and how the state,the employees and the customers were suffering.
Our steel industry had attracted large public investment to put in five big modern integrated plants only to spend the 1970 s and 1980 s seeking customers to justify the large potential production. Political debate was all about progressive closures under Labour and Conservatives.
Our telecoms industry was still putting in electro mechanical switching from a British produced system the telecoms monopoly wanted which did not sell abroad. The US was well advanced with electronic switching.
The water industry had a network of ageing pipes for a smaller Victorian population. It could not get the large sums needed to expand and renew its networks.
The electricity industry depended heavily on coal power stations that posed air plllution issues and were only 32% thermally efficient.The rail industry was in retreat, losing much of its freight business as well as experiencing declining passenger travel. The coal industry was constantly closing puts claiming they were no longer economic. With the advent of North Sea gas it lost market share rapidly.
All this needed explaining to counter the nationalisation bias and optimism. The nationalisers where they did accept problems usually blamed a shortage of subsidy and investment money from the government. It was remarked at the time we did not own the nationalised industries, they controlled us. The Chairmen were in a powerful position to demand the state covered their losses as they could threaten cuts or big price rises in crucial services. Most were not in a strong enough position with clear enough plans to implement large scale modernisation investment.
By 1979 the CPS had plans a plenty to sell assets, spin off businesses, privatise whole concerns, introduce competition and raise expectations. I produced a grid of all the nationalised industries, setting out their financial results, their investment needs, the assets they could sell, the opportunities to sell all or part of the business, the way employee shareholdings could be introduced and the main issues a privatisation would arouse.
March 24, 2025
A very good article john but today practically all the denationalised industries have been asset stripped by foreign owners
Our electricity system is effectively controlled by the French government. The post office by a Czech billionaire and BT by the Spanish.
It was wrong to allow foreign ownership of critical infrastructure and now we are about to lose steel making by Indian and Chinese companies
Some industries are too important to be left to market pressures.
Now we have milibrains de industrialise policy I don’t suppose it matters
March 24, 2025
How did the BBC fall through the net of denationalisation? And still it is protected by the Blob. Something fishy in the state of Westminster!
March 24, 2025
A good question indeed.
The BBC has gone from strength to strength with its DEI religion and careful choosing of what is and isn’t discussed and who can and can’t speak.
I first noticed this in the 1980’s in my late teens and I was not particularly political back then, but the blatant bias on every topic imaginable was there with flashing neon lights all around it.
March 24, 2025
IW,
I agree with your criticisms, but I have found it pointless doing so on here as my posts are deleted.
The railway is an absolute farce now. Utilities like water are in dire straits and foreigners control much of our public and private enterprises. If you leave yourself open, others will take advantage.
March 24, 2025
I agree with that sentiment.
There must be more to a nation, its institutions and critical infrastructure than just a price tag or place on a balance sheet surely?
For foreign owners, yes that is all there is, and little else matters.
March 24, 2025
Foreign ownership of so many UK assets is one consequence of long standing political hostility to the wealth of and wealth creation by UK citizens. If IHT is 40% then it should be no surprise that those with substantial wealth do not stick around and seek more tax friendly shores. It is not one reform urgently needed if the UK is to start to find the capital needed to finance its regeneration.
March 24, 2025
Typo! For “not” read “only”!
March 24, 2025
Good morning.
Two things.
First. Prior to WWII most industries, such as rail and healthcare, were in private hands. It was only after WWII and the election of a Labour government that many industries were placed in public ownership. So the misguided belief that in the 1980’s we; “Sold the family silver.” is a false one. It was not ‘ours’ to begin with.
Secondly. Today we do not look upon nationalised industries in the same way we did just after WWII and nationalisation. People back then could not know what was to happen. Today nationalisation is not as liked as maybe it was due to all the problems, especially in the 70’s. So there is no clamour for it, but . . . ! Today instead of nationalise an industry we now regulate it via numerous QUANGO’s. Regulation is not bad, but it should be the sole preserve of parliament. Here there are both checks and balances plus feedback via the electorate. QUANGO’s and the like are a law unto themselves and, as I said once, can be useful with a strict mandate and life expectancy mush like the USA’s DOGE headed by Elon Musk.
We threw off the bonds of nationalisation that tied our hands only to have our feet shackled by QUANGO’s.
March 24, 2025
Thank you for that analysis. One feature of the post WW2 years was extraordinarily high personal taxation, something that has crept back again, driving out the really wealthy, their spending and their capital. Post 1970 businesses trading globally had to adjust to the world of rapidly changing FX rates, as currencies once again were allowed to float, and rapid inflation as the price of oil rocketed up from low single digits to $40 a barrel and then having to cope with Volcker’s hike of the Fed’s interest rate to 13% in the early 1980s.
Today, it seems, the challenges are posed by excessive regulations imposed by government and quangos with no thought on their impact on the UK’s competitiveness and its ability to compete globally, as well as by high personal and business taxation. Where, today, is the thinking by any of the political parties or their think tanks of what reform is required if the UK is to sustain it’s currently self indulgent and totally unaffordable lifestyle?
March 24, 2025
Indeed but our industries are not doing so well not with energy so expensive and May’s mad net zero law in the hand of zealot Ed Miliband. Look at steel!
Mel Stride on Sunday something like the war on plant food CO2 is in our DNA as Conservative since Thatcher!
Mel is yet another PPE graduate, needless to say, so zero grasp of science reality. The war on net benefit CO2 (Carbon as they like to mis-call it) is idiotic Mel. I first voted Tory as a teenager I will never do so again until they at least ditch net zero, want to half the size of government, want to control immigration levels amd quality and I can trust them. So probably never in the rest of my life.
March 24, 2025
Mel was a Cameron A lister, rarely a good sign full of lefty greencrap, pro EU dopes like Soubry, Zak Goldsmith, Bowles… see wiki.
March 24, 2025
Heidi Alexander, Secretary of State for Transport of the United Kingdom, just now on Talk Radio on the Heathrow fiasco. “I am not an electrical engineer” she said – indeed we cam tell, do any Labour MPs have any grasp of Physics, Science, Engineering…? She could at least consult some decent experts as could Heathrow’s senior management.. She actually read Geography (Durham). But she did confirm she has not taken any freebies recently unlike Reeves etc.
March 24, 2025
Rejoice surely that Ms. Alexander knows she is “not an electrical engineer” for recall one of her Cabinet colleagues until only recently thought he was a solicitor when he was not.
March 24, 2025
Lee Anderson:- “So, Mr Speaker, I want to ask the Prime Minister a very simple question on behalf of all the Net Zero sceptics. If we became Net Zero tomorrow, by how much would it reduce the earth’s temperature by? Simple question.”
Needless to say just meaningless waffle in reply from Starmer. Doubtless he and mad Zealot Ed will continue putting solar panels on the roofs of schools and hospitals etc. Panels built in China with slave labour and cheap coal produced power. This to give us some rip off electricity but mainly in summer days when not really needed.
March 24, 2025
LL :
They know that CO2 does not control the Earth’s temperature, as shown by Shula & Ott and by Happer & Wijngaarden even using the IPCC’s own radiative model, and our CO2 emissions (whether territorial or consumption) are insignificant.
They also know we do not have the money, the workforce or materials to achieve Net Zero.
But they intend to continue irrespective of the consequences until they are made to stop.
March 26, 2025
Seems so.
March 24, 2025
Stride has pledged that the Not-a-Conservative-Party will never “do a Truss budget again” …. thereby confirming that if you vote for Badenough’s Party you will just get Continuity-OBR and permanent managed decline.
March 24, 2025
+1
March 26, 2025
Stride said net zero is in the Tories DNA since Thatcher. Well get it out of their DNA it is an insane socialist policy. Kemi the “engineer” with duff A levels and no physics is also still sitting on the fence. Asked about fracking she says lots of people do not want it in their areas and we have to take them with us?
Did they take locals “feelings” into account when they dumped thousands of young male migrants into their local areas in expensive hotels?
March 24, 2025
LL : “I first voted Tory as a teenager I will never do so again until they at least ditch net zero, want to half the size of government, want to control immigration levels amd quality and I can trust them. So probably never in the rest of my life.”
Likewise.
March 26, 2025
Same for me, they need not only to ditch the net zero religion but I need to trust them to actually do so after 14 years of endless lies and non delivery. How will Kemi every be trusted. She is not even promising sensible policies yet!
March 24, 2025
LL:
You have to feel sorry for Mel Stride, PPE Oxford, who now believes both the CCC, who on P10 of their 7th Carbon Budget report claim that the net cost of Net Zero is just £5bn/year, and that burning hydrocarbon fuels will be shortly lead to the extinction of the planet, or his leader who is now saying that the UK’s attempt to get to net zero CO2 emissions is impossible and will bankrupt the country. Which way will he jump? What a choice to have to make! Perhaps he should for the first time in his Parliamentary life go to check the data and examine the evidence instead of simply “going with the flow”.
March 24, 2025
How did it work out Sir John?
Are you pleased or frustrated now the watchdog public sector agencies have regulated all of those activities into closure or unsustainable debt, underwritten by the tax payers?
Reply Yes very unhappy about the back door re nationalisation and bad regukation
March 24, 2025
I’d say the threat of asset stripping was understandably overlooked by you and others in the privatisations. US businesses had surely grown from scratch and either already undergone or avoided asset stripping in their organic growth, so it wasn’t recognised here as an issue, and even if it had been thought about, relatively domestic based investors at the time would reinvest any dividends into UK assets. Measures should have been put in place subsequently to ward off cash and ownership going overseas, and this is where the forces of globalisation and privatisation clashed and burned for the UK.
For sure I recall investments in water infrastructure being a major reason to support privatisation, and look where we are now.
Reply We did recognise the threat of foreign take over so government held special shares to prevent that . Labour got rid of the special shares.
March 24, 2025
What a massive and hard win leap forward. From the very brink to the golden years in one leap. Pity you did not ply the same principles to the NHS so that it did not have to ‘compete’ for money with those basic things the government has to provide: defence and justice.
How devastating for all of us who lived through that most British revolution to also live through the Fall.
Only Kipling expresses the disaster – and the biggest word he wrote was ‘IF’.
Every day on this blog, everyone writes, in one form or another ‘if we do this….’
Congratulations JR. You were the right man in the right place and you had a massive positive impact on all our lives.
March 24, 2025
Lynn
The real shame was that Margaret Thatcher promoted and publicly supported John Major instead of John Redwood as Chancellor.
The rest is history, and what could have been !.
March 24, 2025
One of absolute critical errors. Madness in fact, but Maggie was afraid of her internal opposition and tried to ‘buy them off’. It never works of course.
The other massive error was Heath beating Powell. Powell refused to offer ‘promotions’ for votes. He thought people should have voted for him because he was the better candidate. He was, but most people are small minded. Self serving.
March 25, 2025
She either believed or felt obliged to operate “a broad church” Conservative Party so that the Wets were included in the debates held within the Government.
It was a huge mistake not to have a Chancellor who came from her wing of the Party, but even Nigel Lawson supported shadowing the DM and ERM membership.
March 24, 2025
Yes, I remember the brilliance of that time. I can recall reading the letter published by the 365 economists and not feeling the faintest flicker of anxiety. Now everything is imposed and controlled, from the sun’s rays obscured and dimmed as I write, to what I write and even at the molecular level to the DNA in my relatives’ genes.
March 24, 2025
Yes. But have hope. The Tory Party is dead and buried. Starmer is having to now to Reality.
If Reform get rid of Farage they might yet be a proper party, else Reform can go the way of all parties associated with Farage and a real new party that we can all join will be formed without him.
Everything is in flux but we need that for the change that we HAVE to have.
March 24, 2025
Fascinating. Hopefully, this account of the Thatcher government’s policies will be published in book form.
March 24, 2025
What safeguards where there, that seem to have failed if they existed, to prevent unconstrained foreign ownership asset stripping our resources and companies?
Why are our strategic and critical assets and services entirely under foreign control?
How can this be reversed?
March 24, 2025
dixie,
Good points.
March 24, 2025
We have had to sell everything to pay for all the money squandered by the Govt.
There is no free lunch – you pay in the end.
March 24, 2025
What an incredible achievement especially for someone so young. It was the Conservative Party at its best. We need that intellectual ability in charge again. We need that vitality again.
March 24, 2025
Last year Sunak, heavily influenced by the anti-net zero right of the party, changed the timetable for the introduction of EV’s to the British market; this change was opposed by the SMMT. Nissan then stopped production of their popular Leaf EV in the N East, BMW moved production of their electric Mini to Germany. Honda shut their Swindon plant completely and Aston Martin gave up on EV’s altogether. This deluded political decision has cost us thousands of well paid manufacturing jobs.
Little wonder that the country had enough of this sort of deranged anti-EV lunacy & pro-fossil fuel zealotry and voted last year for Labour’s Green Plan to get these jobs back.
Reply That was not the reason they gave up. It was the toxic combination of the £15,000 tax on sales of petrol cars and the poor demand for EVs
March 24, 2025
SG
It is not EV lunacy, it is simply that the product is not suitable for many people, including myself.
March 24, 2025
Sakara, you still don’t seem to understand that there’s no point producing electrical cars that most people can’t afford; can’t charge and don’t want.
You cannot legislate to MAKE people buy something they can’t afford and which won’t “work for them.”
March 24, 2025
The problem with EVs is how few people want to buy them. Despite the deranged campaign buy the green lobby to bully people into buying them it appears only the Motability scheme have been taken in. I’m sticking with petrol thanks.
March 24, 2025
The other difficulties SG are :-
the cost of charging away from home
the reality thst many cannot charge at home
the fact that the national system could not cope if most of us owned electric cars
the extra cost of electric cars in terms of list price and depreciation.
PS
whilst an improvement in air quality might well result, will us all swapping to electric cars actually reduce global temperatures?
March 24, 2025
May I remind you that Herz, the large car rental firm, who I am sure knows more about its business and the products that it uses than an EV Zealot and Fanatic, dumped 20,000 EV’s and went back to ICE cars for its fleet.
The Market decides no matter what governments decree.
March 24, 2025
Honda stopped production of cars in the UK as they wanted to consolidate production in fewer countries and they transferred the production of the cars they were building here to Japan. This has nothing to do with Brexit or the move to EVs, it is simple production economics. Economies of scale are now very important.
Honda sell relatively few cars in the UK ( largely because the cars they build are not popular enough here ) and have already stopped selling us Diesel cars. They are committed to ceasing sales of any IC-engined cars in Europe by 2030. Given the lack of take up of EVs, it seems likely that Honda could well follow Mitsubishi and stop selling any cars in the UK, or even in Europe.
Toyota say that world-wide production of IC-engined cars will continue until at least 2050, and probably much longer, because many parts of the world cannot or will not adapt to EVs. It seems completely daft for us to move to 100% EVs when they are not what buyers want and they have significant disadvantages, including being very expensive and use up precious minerals.
European politicians are killing our car industry for no good purpose.
March 24, 2025
Mr Cold I thought of you when I read about a 15 year old German wind farm closing down. Its subsidies had expired, so it could not continue. Had it had no subsidies in the first place it would never have been built.
I don’t expect you to take the point. Go and consult your hot house Orchids about mains electric and gas. Ask if they suggest you get yourself cut off.
March 24, 2025
Privatisation of the nationalised industries was undoubtedly a good idea but the implementation was flawed.
Our basic infrastructure, including water and energy provision should not be in foreign hands – particularly when those hands are hostile (and I include the French in that description).
March 24, 2025
@ Donna – I do not follow the worries about foreign ownership, presuming that those owners are driven by the same desires for commercial success as would be British owners.
Certainly there is scope in any business for neglect, for failing to modernize and adapt, to miss service targets but proper regulation combined with the threat of re-nationalization (pending re-sale) with limited or no compensation would check any such tendencies, whether exhibited by foriegn or local owners.
Were foreign owners under instruction from their home governments to let their British businesses wither (a doubtful notion, surely), surely hostile takeover bids (perhaps encouraged by regulators) would soon ensue.
March 25, 2025
Because we are reliant on the French for energy, they blackmail us over fish.
Do you think it’s a good idea for the Chinese to control large swathes of our essential infrastructure?
March 24, 2025
I agree that many privatisations have been successful but why did the water industry need privatising, Railtrack is no longer private.
Only those industries where competition can be introduced should have been privatised. Competition is the great regulator as you write Sir John.
Railways, Water only have one pipe and one suppler. These should not have been privatised. Government became as addicted to the money and became as doctrinal about privatisation as Rachel from the PPI team on private school VAT or Union pay rises.
Reply There should be competition in water. There is usually only one gas pipe and one power cable into a house but we have competition.
March 24, 2025
Reply to reply: There is little risk of getting ‘polluted’ gas or electricity. But whatever the competition in pricing for water, if the sanitation procedure is flawed, if there are overflows due to weather conditions, if there are leaks or external pollution in the distribution system, if there is piping that should have been replaced years/decades ago, if there are ‘repairs’ that need to be done again and again within a couple of months, whatever the price competition and their potentially slightly different monthly/quarterly bills the consumers will get the same ‘quality’ of water.
Your argument doesn’t stand up.
There have been/are examples of such events in the Wokingham district over the years.
OfWat is doing a poor job, Thames Water is the perfect example of a failed water company. And introducing ‘competition’ is very unlikely to change the water services.
March 24, 2025
h
You are therefore claiming a Government owned Thames Water would be completely fully funded and have none of the problems you mention.
I admire your optimism.
March 24, 2025
If there is a fault in the gas and electric supply don’t result in ‘pollution’ but ‘explosion’.
Very few of those.
March 24, 2025
R to R
With respect, Sir John you are once again comparing apples to oranges.
There was always private enterprise in electricity, but in generation, not supply. The railways were privately financed and owned up to and including WWII where, due the war effort and restrictions on steel and investment, rolling stock and track were run into the ground. Hence why nationalisation for this industry was seen as a good thing at the time. Water and sanitation are essential for good health and life and needs to be treated differently.
At the end of the day, to me at least, it all comes down to choice. Can I choose ? If not, replacing a private monopoly is no better than a State run one.
Reply There is competition over retail supply of electricity. You can use any pipe or wire network as a common carrier or at least let competitors put in new pipes and cables if that makes economic sense.
March 24, 2025
How we wish there were more people of the calibre of you and Sir Keith in the party today!
March 24, 2025
Would they be in the current party? JR might still be a member, but certainly it’s the party that has diminished.
March 24, 2025
Privatisation, whilst good in general, didn’t work at all for near-monopolies – look at Thames Water. You indirectly admit that yourself by advocating strong regulation of them when in all other circumstances you favour less regulation of the private sector. If companies like that have to be regulated so strongly by a Quango to prevent them operating to their best advantage as private enterprises then they might as well be nationalised. One might also point to the GP network as a monopoly provider (to the NHS) in the private sector which would be better nationalised.
March 24, 2025
Sir John
A weighty subject this morning, many in and out and what ifs. Yes, at all times not having Government running and the taxpayer paying for things is the right direction.
The however, is the implementation of the ‘Privation’ As already stated by @ian Wraggg, there is an inherent asset stripping situation that has worked against the objective of stand-alone, resilient and self-reliant enterprises. I am not thinking of the sale of surplus assets, where actually falls down is that much needed assets to run a business are sold then rented back for no other reason than the new owner outfit doesn’t want to fund the purchase with their own or their shareholders money. So, these Privatised entities start from day one with massive debts, high interest payments and no ‘actual’ investment money of their own. In essence the buyer couldn’t afford the purchase but saw an opportunity for a quick ‘buck’ at someone else’s expense.
A case in point would be Thames Water, crippled with debt from the get go, yet none of the debt is attributed to growth or customer service. The debt is just the high interest payments on assets needed to run the operation being sold off so the original purchaser could get there money out free and clear. This practice is not confined to Privatised Industries, there are many others in the same distorted boat. 2 of the UK’s largest Supermarkets are failing, because the purchasers did not intend spending their own money.
Borrowing works, but borrowing to fund a purchase against the assets of the purchase causes failure. It not even borrowing against profits and ability to pay from those profits – profits are protected shareholder dividends. From there we always get failure, the consumer gets screwed and so does ultimately the Taxpayer. But there is never risk for the purchaser. There is something wrong when that happens
Governments don’t understand money or running a business so are duped and don’t carry out due diligence. They put the ‘snake oil’ salesman above reality
March 24, 2025
We saw on Friday Heathrow Airport being taken out by fire at a power distribution facility on the National grid. That is concerning as Heathrow is considered a National Asset, part of the economy. Unfortunately for the UK is a foreign owned asset – they have a different criterion when it comes to ownership and shareholder dividends.
The UK’s energy grid is in situ to provide backup; hence it is a grid of interconnected power supplies. So, the question of one outage blocking power seems out of the equation. Today we learn that the Grid Company themselves are questioning Heathrow’s actions, there was plenty of power 2 other substations each in their own right could have kept Heathrow at full power.
While on the subject of Heathrow, first it is a private foreign owned company. Yes, they want a third runway, I have no feelings on that one way or another. However, the third runway requires major disruption for the M25 and the re-sighting of the M25. A massive cost. It is unclear on who will pay, the suggestions so far it will be the Taxpayer, that would be a massive hit that we the taxpayer can’t afford just to aid a Private Foreign owned companies bottom line.
There is something inherently misplaced in the way we do things in the UK
March 24, 2025
Ian B
Broken Britain. A separate issue to privatisation and it affects both the private and public sectors.
The hope that something will be ‘good enough’. Slapdash implementation. Skiving. Turning a blind eye. Covering up issues. Etc.
March 24, 2025
Hi sir John
Nothing changed
Trouble is people stand to be an MP with no experience of business all of a sudden these MP’S will no experience suddenly become minister for the NHS with no medical knowledge and transport and defence and so on there has never been a government for the UK and that the way it will go on for ever
March 24, 2025
But I wish that the the regulation of the utilities had copied the tried and tested Hong Kong model which would have prevented the Thames Watersituation. Why did the civil servants not consider the Hong Kong model ?
March 24, 2025
Hong Kong got it model from us. We are the Source.
March 24, 2025
Privatisation was just part of the Thatcher revolution which transformed our country. I remember all too well the depressing state of the UK economy, still working as I was in what had once been a huge site of great factories. In the early 1970’s they had no work or were on strike. It was dismal and worse. If the Tories hadn’t won that election we would surely have been finished as a high tech country.
Nationalisation is another term for ever more socialism – it’s part of the perverted ideas rolling around socialist-minds to make everything fair. That that means in practice is that everyone is equally poor and oppressed.
Our host has shown so well how bad Nationalisation can be. Privatised industries only work well with a strong honest parliament to keep them on the straight and narrow, certainly not under the rogue one we have now.
Where are we headed as a nation, knowing that HMG is likely to nationalise everything in sight to emulate the industrial despair of the 1970’s? For that you need to refer to the plan.
March 24, 2025
One of the problems with nationalisation was that may industries required substantial investment post war. The government could just print loads of money, and did, but this led to inflation. This rise in inflation led in turn to demands from unions for ever larger pay rises. With a huge post war debt (thanks USA) to service we needed to export. Problem was, the Empire (our version of the EU) was being dismantled. Our solution was the EEC, but as we all know, that came with onerous terms which has done more harm than good.
March 24, 2025
Privatisation has been deliberately subverted by the Regulators using Parliamentary (really Civil Service) legislation.
In addition insufficient numbers working on the public payroll get sacked for laziness, negligence, incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, misbehaviour, insubordination or even treachery.
In fact, those at the very top are rewarded with golden goodbyes and another similar job with a golden hello.
Even falsely sending dozens of people to prison doesn’t warrant a sanction let alone a prison sentence.
March 24, 2025
100% Correct !
But this was a result of all the Blair Reforms from 1997 which deliberately sought to had power to QUANG’s that were affiliated to the EU. Parliament and its sovereignty was deliberately hollowed out with TTK in pole position to finish the job and Balkanise England and then re-join the EU.
March 24, 2025
Now we have a Trump spanner in the works. Ironic if it’s Starmer who cuts the State, allies with the USA etc. Stranger things have happened.
March 24, 2025
“OPEC induced oil price surge”?
Not really. The oil price surge was directly related to the “Nixon shock” when the US$ became a fiat currency rather than linked to gold at $35 per ounce.
The oil producers wanted equivalent “value” in the devalued dollars as had been the case when the dollar was sound.
In short, gold went up in dollar price, the producers wanted the same for their products, not devalued “pieces of engraved paper”.
It is a mistake to think that the Arab peoples, who have been traders for centuries, are primitive fools. They are very far from that.
March 24, 2025
+1
This is what a lot of past and present wars are about. Anyone who threatens to US Dollar as the reserve currency is in trouble. President Trump sees this and is trying to change the way the US works to better insulate itself against the rise of BRICS and especially China.
March 24, 2025
Privatisations were one of the great achievements of the 1980s (and many other countries later copied Britain in this). I thank Sir John and posthumously Margaret Thatcher for this. In the mid 1970s I was one of the small minority of members of Cambridge University Conservative Association who wanted all the then nationalised industries to be denationalised.
However there is now further to go. Even those service provisions that are publicly funded should be privately operated. Some money was saved in doing this to some prisons but there needs to be genuine competition in the badly operated and expensively run N.H.S. and in schools – much nursery ‘education’ is run and run relatively efficiently along those lines, so why not schools? Let us embrace the principle of ‘publicly funded, privately operated’ for big parts of the public sector and thereby create a new wave of privatisations to serve the public with more choice and better service for less cost.
March 24, 2025
Vouchers? Education, Health, Pension, – put the power back in the hands of the consumer.
March 24, 2025
Hi John why then did the conservatives allow government to get so bloated that the Labour Party are reducing the civil service to an acceptable level which our party allowed to balloon to add woke and gender issues to cloud their judgement. You mention Nationalisation to private ownership as ways to save further funding but allowed Thames Water to create an 18 Billion debt with dividends to it mainly overseas shareholders when they did not produce any annual profit over the last 10 years.
Reply WaTer Regulator was poor. You need competition to keep monopolies under control.
March 24, 2025
R to R
With water you can only compete to have the ‘license’ to supply water using existing pipes etc. I do not have multiple taps / meters / pipes from which I can choose.
March 24, 2025
Under the current renationalisation plans by 2027, who will pay the pension liabilities of the staff on transfer? Are we about to renationalise a massive underfunded pension scheme?
March 24, 2025
O/T Do you know why DJT is so interested in Greenland? Because only he might have only a Mercator projection of the surface of the Earth (foreignpolicy.com 14/02/2025 ‘How big does Donald Trump think Greenland is?’
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