ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two social policy case studies: education vouchers and housing. It highlights the limits of liberal economic ideas on the policies of Thatcherism as well as reinforcing the idea that the Conservative Party helped foster new vested interests in Britain. The chapter also examines to what extent these principles were applied to education and housing policy. A question that preoccupied liberals was the role of the state. Its role and scope has differed throughout modern British historical periods. Education vouchers could have been introduced at the end of the first Thatcher term, while Keith Joseph was Secretary of State for Education. The sale of council houses to their tenants has been widely acknowledged as one of the most popular, if not the most popular, reform of the Thatcher government. Right to Buy, as Skelton predicted in the 1920s, reignited (or consolidated) the British obsession with homeownership.
