This book examines the personalities (President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher, Milton Friedman and Sir Keith Joseph, Denis Healey and Edward Heath) and political in-fighting that led to a remarkable but short-lived triumph for monetarist theory and policy. Now that even Conservatives have consigned monetarism to the scrap-heap of history, David Smith draws out the unhappy lessons of a fundamentally flawed economic experiment.

North and South

by David Smith

Published 26 October 1989
The north-south divide in Britain is not a line drawn across the country above which everyone is poor and below which everyone is rich, but there are fundamental economic, political and social differences which are widening every year. This book examines the differences in wealth, employment, housing, investment and attitudes, the trends and the possible ways of making Britain one nation instead of two. The book will draw on unpublished economic and political sources to show the consequences of government policies (eg the poll tax) and the long term trends.