Trust the Experts! Even when they're wrong!
Left wingers have never forgiven Thatcher for postponing the UK's decline
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The Biggest Public Attack British Economists Ever Made on a Sitting Government
On 30 March 1981, 364 economists from across British universities signed an open letter to The Times declaring that the government's anti-inflation strategy had "no basis in economic theory or supporting evidence." It was drafted by Frank Hahn and Robert Neild at Cambridge after Howe's March budget. The signatories included a future Governor of the Bank of England.
What They Demanded
The letter said Thatcher's policy would deepen the recession and threaten Britain's social and political stability. It called for the rejection of monetarism in favor of "alternative policies." In 1981, that meant the postwar Keynesian formula: more public borrowing, looser money, and state support for failing industry. Thatcher refused to reflate.
Britain Was the Sick Man of Europe
By 1979 Britain had spent a decade falling behind every major European economy. Inflation hit 24 percent in 1975. The Callaghan government took a $3.9 billion IMF bailout in 1976, the largest in the Fund's history at that point. The Winter of Discontent of 1978-79 left rubbish uncollected and the dead unburied as public sector strikes paralyzed the country. The top marginal tax rate stood at 83 percent on earned income and 98 percent on investment income. The 364 wrote no letter against this.
What Thatcher Actually Did
She rejected the Keynesian demand that Britain borrow and spend its way out of the recession. The top marginal income tax rate fell from 83 percent to 60 percent in 1979 and to 40 percent by 1988. The basic rate fell from 33 percent to 25 percent. Exchange controls were abolished in October 1979. British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, and British Steel were sold to the public. The Employment Acts of 1980, 1982, and 1984 broke the unions' power to shut the country down.
Britain Began Recovering in 1982
GDP turned positive in 1982 and grew for the rest of the decade, peaking at 5 percent a year by 1988. British GDP per capita was growing faster than France's, Germany's, or Italy's, reversing decades of relative decline. The recession the 364 said would deepen ended within twelve months of their letter.
The Productivity Gap with Germany Closed for the First Time in a Generation
In 1979, West German output per hour worked stood 40 percent above Britain's. By 1989 that advantage had fallen to 17 percent. UK manufacturing output per worker rose roughly 78 percent over the broader period. Britain stopped losing ground to Europe and started catching up.
The Industries the Economists Said Couldn't Survive Were Replaced by Something Larger
On 27 October 1986 the Big Bang deregulated the London Stock Exchange. Fixed commissions ended and electronic trading began. Within a decade London had reclaimed its position as a top-tier global financial center. The capital the 364 said would vanish reorganized itself around higher-value activity.
They Never Retracted. They Were Promoted.
No collective retraction was ever issued. The signatories who later addressed the letter defended it as substantively correct, arguing the recovery happened despite the policy rather than because of it. Mervyn King, one of the 364, became Governor of the Bank of England. Stephen Nickell joined the Monetary Policy Committee.
The most prominent failed forecast in postwar British economics produced no professional consequences.
The Same Pattern Repeated in 2023
In October 2023, 108 economists including Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman signed an open letter warning that a Milei victory would cause "devastation" in Argentina.
He won. Monthly inflation fell from 25.5 percent in December 2023 to roughly 2 percent by mid-2025. Poverty dropped from 52.9 percent in early 2024 to 28.2 percent in the second half of 2025.
The Mechanism Repeats Because Nobody Pays for Being Wrong
A credentialed body issues a collective denunciation. Major outlets treat the letter as expert consensus. The policy succeeds anyway. No retraction follows, because the professional cost of being publicly wrong about a major economic prediction inside academic economics is approximately zero.
Thatcher Is Hated Because She Was Right
The results vindicated her and condemned her critics. People who build their identity around a vision of the world do not abandon that vision when the data contradicts it. They attack whoever the data vindicates. Her record is what their careers were built against. That is why the hatred has not faded in forty years.
