The Times, May 22, Patrick Minford
Nearly 40 years ago, 364 economists wrote a letter to The Times denouncing Margaret Thatcher’s monetarist budget as a recipe for national ruin, and were widely supported by establishment opinion. I was not among them. Challenged in the Commons to name two economists who agreed with her, Mrs Thatcher named me and Alan Walters. Afterwards, her private secretary joked that it was a good thing she had not been asked to name three.
I say this to make a simple and valid point. The establishment consensus is often wrong. And they were wrong about the Thatcher economic reforms of the 1980s. The same establishment was also wrong about entry into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, joining the euro, and leaving the European Union which they claimed would crash the economy. It didn’t and it won’t.
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