Remember Ted Heath’s greatest hits of the 70s?
Riding high in the charts was his ‘prices and incomes policy’. Followed by ‘state subsidies’ and ‘picking the winners’. And who can forget the smash hit ‘Barber boom’ – with the bust on the B side.
Far from being a distant memory, too many Tories today are carrying on as if they were in a Ted Heath tribute band.
Instead of a statutory incomes policy, they are crooning about something called a ‘living wage’. That’s right folks, these retro Tories want us to overturn one of the greatest Thatcherite achievements and undo the free labour market reforms. (Heck, why don’t they go the whole hog, and insist that the living wage be set at £50,000 a year, and we’d all be rich?)
These retro Tories haven’t only ditched the idea of liberalised labour markets. They seem to be losing faith in popular capitalism, too.
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