Thatcher set out to get Britain growing.
Her solution to the bloated post-war state was to shrink it and sell it off - move it to the private sector.
The thinking was government is inherently inefficient, and the private sector, disciplined by market forces, is not.
In the short term, it looked like it was working.
The sales raised money, grew investor wealth, and reduced public debt.
And in some cases it did work - where privatisation created real competition - telecoms, airlines like British Airways. BT was in competition with rivals and prices fell.
But it was too much.
Privatisation only works when there is competition to do the disciplining.
A water company, a railway, a national grid - these are natural monopolies.
There is one set of pipes, one set of tracks. Selling them doesn’t create competition; it just transfers a public monopoly to a private one.
The answer to an inefficient state was never to sell off its monopolies. It was to make the state itself run them better.
