It has always been Conservative-led administrations that change Britain’s economic course. It was the National Government of the 1930s that forced through the modernisation of Britain’s industrial backbone, with mergers in rail and electricity generation, and that, in London Transport, created the model for future nationalisations. The National Government encouraged the great shift of industrial activity southwards, with critical new industries, such as car manufacturing, spreading across the Midlands and into the south east. And it was then Margaret Thatcher’s government that broke all this up: overseeing the destruction of manufacturing employment, reorganising and privatising the industrial backbone and globalising financial services.
Successful Labour administrations might introduce critically important social legislation, or improve the provision of public services. But none of them, from Clement Attlee to Tony Blair, has ever convincingly altered the consensus on economic management set by the previous Tory-led administration. Attlee’s government (1945-1951) brought railways, coal mines, electricity generation and other critical sectors into public ownership. But public ownership itself made no meaningful difference to the management of these industries. Wartime controls were eased and promises of more radical change, such as land nationalisation, made in the 1945 manifesto, were quietly forgotten.
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