Evening Standard: "Anthony Hilton: Sacrifice is needed to stop this slide into poorer times"

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"So where did all the money go? If Thatcher really did change the British economy for the better, how come the generation that spent most time working in it is worse off than the generation earlier, which had to make its way in the 1960s and 1970s?

"... If she really did transform the economy, then those working in it should have prospered in a way they clearly have not. Perhaps in general terms it is time to question whether the Thatcher revolution was all it was cracked up to be — or at any rate justifies the eulogies heaped on it by a modern generation of politicians who were barely around at the time.

Perhaps it was not such a bright idea to rely solely on market forces and encourage such a massive bet on financial services. Perhaps our post-Thatcher economic performance is a lot less than it seems.

"... This news ought to be a wake-up call. To maximise our chances of delivering long-term prosperity, we need to run the country with an eye to the national balance sheet.First, we need to calculate how much we have to set aside simply to maintain the quality of what we have inherited as economic infrastructure — to prevent the deterioration of roads, rail, electricity, health and educational institutions and so on. ..."