Great diary and an interesting read, thanks. Ad astra per aspera
But yes, it worked. The current Commission is still paddling down that river. Fischer Boel talks Thatcher talk. Regulation = red tape, gets in the way of individual effort and enterprise. It's bollocks, but it's very easy to believe.
Well, Fisher Boel is a text-book example. A political (and intellectual) non-entity with a rich and well-connected daddy. I don't remember what she did to get banished to Bruxelles, but I remember sighing with relief that we would at least be rid of her back home.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain ...
Now combine with:
The lesson of the economic history of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s is that central planning and detailed control don't work, and that personal endeavour and initiative do.
So, the previous conditions "the frontiers of the state" that provided the evidence for "personal endeavour" being superior to "central planning" have been "rolled back."
Thus, the conditions Thatcher is using as supporting evidence have been destroyed, meaning an historic (environmental) discontinuity, meaning her evidence is no longer affective in the environment she created.
