Vuonna 2008 alkanutta finanssikriisiä hoidettiin keynesiläisellä elvytyksellä eli julkisia menoja lisäämällä. Nyt palataan päinvastaiseen lääkkeeseen, 1980-luvun thatcherismiin. Britannian pitkäaikainen pääministeri leikkasi rajusti julkisia menoja.

Margaret Thacher piti merkittävän linjapuheen konservatiivien puoluekokouksessa lokakuussa 1980. Puheen talouspoliittiset linjaukset sopisivat hyvin talouskomissaari Olli Rehnin suuhun. Thatcher piti Britannian talouden pahimpana ongelmana julkisten menojen jatkuvaa kasvua.

If spending money like water was the answer to our country’s problems, we would have no problems now. If ever a nation has spent, spent, spent and spent again, ours has. Today that dream is over. All of that money has got us nowhere but it still has to come from somewhere. Those who urge us to relax the squeeze, to spend yet more money indiscriminately in the belief that it will help the unemployed and the small businessman are not being kind or compassionate or caring.

They are not the friends of the unemployed or the small business. They are asking us to do again the very thing that caused the problems in the first place. We have made this point repeatedly.

I am accused of lecturing or preaching about this. I suppose it is a critic’s way of saying “Well, we know it is true, but we have to carp at something.” I do not care about that. But I do care about the future of free enterprise, the jobs and exports it provides and the independence it brings to our people.

Vuonna 1996 Thatcher kertasi hallituksensa (1979-1990) talouspoliittisia saavutuksia ja muistutti, että ekonomistit olivat väärässä väittäessään, että talouskasvua ei saataisi aikaan julkisia menoja leikkaamalla.

Public spending as a share of GDP fell, which allowed tax rates to be cut — and government borrowing was reduced. We repaid debt.  364 economists who claimed that it was madness to think you could get economic growth by cutting government borrowing were proved wrong: I’m told they were never the same again.

Tässä kuva Suomen, Ranskan ja Englannin talouskasvusta 1980-luvulla (OECD). Julkisten menojen leikkaaminen ei ainakaan hidastanut brittitalouden vauhtia, jos sitä vertaa muihin.