Royal Mail, Eurostar, Northern Rock and so much more: this is ideological asset-stripping on a scale Margaret Thatcher could only have dreamed of
Selling off the family silver: that was the accusation against Margaret Thatcher, when Harold Macmillan condemned her with resoundingly aristocratic disdain. “The sale of assets is common with individuals and the state when they run into financial difficulties. First the Georgian silver goes, and then all the nice furniture that used to be in the saloon. Then the Canalettos go.” He ventured “to question the using of these huge sums as if they were income.”
The wise old man warned in the Lords: “Modern economists have decided there is no difference between capital and income. I am not so sure.” He recalled 1929, “when your Lordships had friends, very good friends, who failed to make this distinction. For a few years everything went well, and then at last the crash came, and they were forced to retire to some dingy lodging-house in Boulogne.”
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