ABSTRACT
The ultimate goal must be to restore the British economy to growth and prosperity: defeating inflation is one crucial condition for that. The other is by improving the performance of the economy, by making it more flexible and adaptable in its response to technological change and developments in market conditions. Inflation, by contrast, was increasingly seen as a matter to be dealt with by microeconomic policy – the panoply of controls and subsidies associated with the era of incomes policy. But a medium-term approach has also been a vital part of conditioning expectations so that the private sector could see the degree of adjustment necessary and the overall approach that the government would take – in other words the ‘rules of the game’. The true British Experiment is a political experiment. It is the demonstration that trade union power can be curbed within a free society and that inflation can be eradicated within a democracy.
