12.10.05

Right to the end

Seldon's insistence (often in articles for The Daily Telegraph) that small government should be promoted without reference to what was "politically possible" helped to make Thatcherism happen. It is now difficult to recall that, when he and Ralph Harris set up the Institute for Economic Affairs, the overwhelming consensus in all parties was that the man in Whitehall always knew best, and that prosperity could be achieved only by governments. That such days seem impossibly remote is a tribute to him and his work.