There was another idea out there too. It was proposed by the Conservative politician Keith Joseph and was entirely radical – so removed from the mainstream, in fact, that during filming of Panorama, Joseph turned to the production team and asked exasperatedly if they understood what he meant.
That idea was the free market.
This meant Britain departing from the post World War Two consensus that government should control the economy and that instead if you left the markets alone, they would deliver the country greater prosperity and security.
If, in 2025, the idea sounds anything but radical, that’s exactly the point.
What we saw in the UK in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher’s government was just how quickly the free market transitioned from a radical idea into the new reality. Then before long it became what many assumed was the system that would last forever.
US President Donald Trump is a billionaire businessman who has clearly done well financially out of capitalism. But suddenly, thanks in part to him, the free market system finds itself under assault like never before.
It might yet weather the storm. However others are asking if the free market system is fatally flawed and doomed to failure?
