Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain.
• You won’t know James Bevan, but you should know what he did to this country• Boris Johnson wrecked Britain. But this man left even deeper scars• The hardcore socialist whose ruinous idea is why Liz Truss became PM• Martin Lewis: the money-saving expert… who accidentally cost Britons billions• The American woman who ripped the heart out of Cadbury• The shadowy maverick who pulled Labour’s strings… and sunk Starmer• Steven Bartlett: the glorified PR man quietly making Britain worse• The anti-sex, anti-fun godmother of Nimbys who gummed up modern Britain
The incoming prime minister Andy Burnham has said he wants to “end 40 years of neoliberalism”, which saw a “draining away of economic, social and political power”. One of the chief architects of that process was Nigel Lawson.
Lawson, an immensely influential figure who held a range of posts in Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 80s, gave away, sold or mismanaged untold swathes of that power. Britain is still paying the price for his mistakes today.
“Our policies aimed at a conscious break … with the entire post-war consensus,” Lawson recounted in his memoir The View from No. 11, “to change the entire culture of a nation from anti-profits, anti-business, government-dependent lassitude and defeatism, to a pro-profit, pro-business, robustly independent vigour and optimism.”
