Inside Thatcher’s Monetarism Experiment: The Promise, the Failure, the Legacy

Tim Lankester

PUBLICATION DATE: 21 MAY 2024 | POLICY PRESS | HARDBACK | £19.99

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher’s new government was faced with rampant double-digit inflation, rising unemployment and flatlining economic growth. In response, Thatcher pursued an economic policy which rejected the old orthodoxies and was promoted by only a minority of economists: a policy based on the untried doctrine of monetarism, which sees the only way of controlling inflation is by controlling the money supply. But it took three years to bring inflation down to single figures, whilst unemployment more than doubled and manufacturing output fell by nearly one fifth.

Tim Lankester was the private secretary for economic affairs to Thatcher during the early years of her government. His insider’s account explains her attitudes and decisions and those of the other main players in this deeply damaging experiment in economic policy making, which promised much but completely failed to deliver.

Whilst offering fascinating insights into one of the most unsuccessful episodes of British economic history, Inside Thatcher’s Monetarism Experiment also explains the intellectual origins of monetarism and why it failed, and examines the legacy of monetarism for the economy today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sir Tim Lankester, KCB, was Margaret Thatcher’s first private secretary for economic affairs. He was subsequently Britain’s representative on the boards of the IMF and the World Bank; Permanent Secretary at the former Overseas Development Administration; Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; and President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.