Following the death of Margaret Thatcher, her legacy still remains a controversial issue for some. However, the data on the economic recovery of the British economy during her tenure are relentless - they point out to declining unemployment (after an initial necessary spike in order to allow the economy to restructure), falling inflation, lower government spending, lower tax rates, a balanced budget by the end of the tenure, falling debt-to-GDP by the end of the tenure, rising disposable income, rising productivity, and high levels of GDP per capita growth. Her reforms enabled a new sustainable growth model for the UK which kept their economy rising steadily for quite some time. Privatization of inefficient state industries, the fight against vested interest and oligopolies (both in the financial industry and among the unions), the Big Bang of 1986, opening up the country to new competition, and a whole range of other industrial, regulatory and legal reforms all led to the modernization of Britain and made it restore its former glory in the years that followed. It is through those achievements that her legacy should be observed.
The graphs below confirm this to a certain extent, even though her transition of the British economy should be observed from several dimensions, not just through crude numbers. On that perspective, I recommend Nicholas Crafts Vox EU column as a sort of an economic obituary of Lady Thatcher.
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| Source: The Economist |
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| Source: The Economist |