No, Margaret Thatcher did not destroy Britain

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Britain is in a funk. Economic sclerosis, populist agitation, social fragmentation – now with extra domestic terrorism – and a political class bewildered by it all. What to do? Enter historian A.G. Hopkins. In his book, ‘The Land Where Nothing Works: How Britain Lost the Plot’, Hopkins’ sweeping analysis explores the last two centuries of British political and economic development. Cut through the details and his argument is quite simple: ‘It was Thatcher wot done it!’

Hopkins scans the horizon and sees little but decay. Public services are ‘near collapse’. Underfunded state schools fail to educate; a cash-strapped NHS fails to heal – at least in a timely manner. Young adults are saddled with ruinous debt, cannot find jobs and will never buy a home. Nothing symbolises ‘our crumbling country’ better than the physical decrepitude of the Palace of Westminster. Living standards continue to plunge, aggravated by Brexit. Bankers in the City, of course, continue to thrive in an economy that has abandon manufacturing for finance. The rest of the country, not so much.

Where did it all go wrong? Since the Second World War, Hopkins identifies two transitions: the postwar consensus of Clement Attlee in 1945; and the neoliberalism of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Attlee introduced a social democratic model with a managed economy and the modern welfare state, all resting upon an ethos of equality, community and public mindedness. To Hopkins’ lament, this world has ‘faded in the public mind’. The second and still operative program is Thatcherism based on deregulation, privatisation and the elevation of individual over community. This is where Britain ‘lost the plot’ and slouched to our near dystopian present. Salvation can only come from repentance, renewing our faith in a social democratic future.  

The only way for Hopkins the historian to uphold this conclusion, alas, is to ignore much of postwar history, blithely brushing aside or simply denying the structural and political forces pushing the turn away from collectivism. In my own book published last year (‘Forging the Iron Lady: Margaret Thatcher, the 1970s, and the Origins of Neoliberalism’), I chronicle how relative economic decline and the crises of the 1970s exacerbated the core weakness of the postwar economic model – ingrained inflation. The inability of political leaders to manage this within the existing model made the Thatcherite program economically viable and electorally attractive. 

Hopkins sees that turn more as a sinister plot. He suggests the idea of postwar decline ‘dissolved under scrutiny’ (p. 86). That is true, but only through the rhetorical prestidigitation of defining ‘decline’ strictly as absolute decline, a genuine decline in output and wages, which did not happen in the postwar boom. That was never the issue, though. It was Britain’s poor relative performance. The economy grew, but others grew faster, and Britain steadily fell behind. Per capita GDP in the UK was above that of both France and West Germany in 1950. By the time Thatcher reached Downing Street, it had fallen substantially below. Oddly, Hopkins concedes this point while simultaneously declaring ‘declinism’ a myth (p. 64). Politicians at the time did not think it an invention, which leads to the (ultimately unsuccessful) innovations of the Harold Macmillan’s National Economic Development Council, Harold Wilson’s National Plan and multiple attempts, eventually successful, to bring Britain into the European Economic Community. All were motivated by the recognised problem of relative decline. 

Ditto the impact of the 1970s. Hopkins contends the crises of the decade – the miners’ strikes, the three-day week, runaway inflation, the IMF crisis, the Winter of Discontent – were not indicative of flaws in the postwar order. The ‘crisis’  was manufactured by Conservative politicians and a supportive press. To use Hopkins’ own words, this claim ‘dissolves under scrutiny’. Jim Callaghan told cabinet colleagues that, given the state of the nation, were he a younger man he would emigrate. Bernard Donoughue, head of the Number 10 Policy Unit for both Wilson and Callaghan, wrote in his diary upon returning from France, ‘From abroad I am able to see England a little clearer. It looked a terrible mess. Falling apart economically as well as socially.’ Cabinet minister Richard Crossman felt Britain was in a Weimar situation and feared for democracy. They were all voices from the pinnacle of the Labour Party. ‘The land where nothing works’ is an even more apt description for Britain in the seventies than it is today. And yet Hopkins bids us to go back. He wishes to fix the country by fighting failure with failure. 

In the final chapter, he returns to the contemporary landscape in search of alternatives, settling upon continental European economies, especially Germany. Again, the actual economic performance and political coherence of these systems in 2026 are brushed aside. Germany has seen tepid economic growth coupled with the rapid rise of the populist right-wing Alternative für Deutschland. Is this the model he wants to emulate? Indeed, because his main concern is to inoculate Britain against the greatest danger: Americanisation. The trajectory of American society ‘provides a warning we should heed’ (p. 211). Unfortunately, comparative economic performance does not conform to his political preferences. In 2010, the GDP of the US and EU were on par. Now the US economy is one-third larger. Hopkins does not grapple openly with these material trade-offs.   

On the surface, ‘The Land Where Nothing Works’ is a study of history and political economy. Deep down, it is a really a cri de coeur for a lost world of community, equality and public spiritedness. Whether that is a fair depiction of postwar realities or tinted with nostalgia is debatable. (Were union actions during the Winter of Discontent manifestations of a ‘community’ ethos?) Still, there is nothing wrong with building a case for a particular moral economy. Where Hopkins, dare I say, loses the plot is in attempting to employ the ‘trends of history’ in support of his argument while simultaneously glossing over great chunks of the relevant history that contradict his thesis.  

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