ABSTRACT
The policies of ‘deregulation’, of secondary significance during the Thatcher government’s early drive toward privatization, became, with the reorganization of the National Health Service and the reform of the legal profession, politically significant in Thatcher’s last term of office and remains a central—if somewhat modified—plank of Majorism. The emergence of Thatcherite ‘deregulation’ policies have been explained in largely ideological terms; that is, as a product of neo-classical economics—a return to the primacy of market forces and a commitment to competition, cost-effectiveness and consumer choice. This was undoubtedly the dominant rhetoric of the privatization programme overall. However, once such rhetoric is applied to ‘deregulation’ as it affected an increasingly wide range of institutions, including the professions, it loses force and coherence as a full explanation of government policy.
