“A personality like Thatcher's has very complex political, economic and financial aspects but I find it unfair to attribute responsibilities to the Iron Lady which are above all her successors and which do not take into account the real situation in England at the time Thatcher arrived for the first time at the helm of the government”. Stefano Micossi, general manager of Assonime trained at the Bank of Italy school and certainly not eligible under the banner of Chicago liberalism, is not about to trivialize the figure of Thatcher with summary judgments, even if he sees its limits, especially in terms of social. "Let's not forget - adds Micossi - that the England that found Thatcher when she assumed the leadership of the government in the XNUMXs was a demoralized England, weakened by high inflation and high unemployment and for years without growth, in short, a country which – apart from inflation – looked a lot like today's Italy and it is to this country that the Iron Lady administers a shock therapy, however making it take a large leap forward”.
FIRSTonline – Micossi, who was Thtacher really? The outsider who revolutionized England by favoring the individual over the state and society or the leader who, by marrying the unbridled liberalism of the Chicago school, laid the foundations of the current economic and financial crisis?
MICOSSI – It was certainly the first. A woman who governed England in the 2007s with a clear vision and strong determination cannot be attributed the responsibility for a crisis that erupted in XNUMX. The Iron Lady found herself having to deal with the crisis of Keynesianism and he became the standard bearer of privatizations and the market but it is essential to understand that his approach was always pragmatic and not ideological. On balance, her governments revisited public spending by attacking corporatism but, numbers in hand, public spending was not cut significantly. Thatcher revisited the perimeter of the public sector but in terms of its functioning and mechanisms rather than quantity. Surely her governments regenerated the English economy by opening it up to the market and to innovation against corporatism and closures even if in those years social differences increased visibly.
FIRSTonline – Romano Prodi is instead convinced that Thatcher's philosophy laid the foundations for the subsequent crisis but, as he wrote in Il Sole 24 Ore, he wonders whether it is right to attribute its paternity to her or rather to her "slightly stupid interpreters" .
MICOSSI – Yes, I too think that the damage was done later when the thesis on the centrality of the market was transformed into that of the market's ability to regulate itself, without the need for rules. But that's not Thatcher's fault that she hasn't been in Downing Street for a long time.
FIRSTonline – Basically what is left of Thatcherism today after Thatcher?
MICOSSI – The fundamental points of Thatcher's thought and action remain valid if I think of the opening to the market economy, the centrality of the individual, the halt to the intrusiveness of the State and the rejection of corporate, bureaucratic and socialist encrustations of England at the time. And of today's Italy.
FIRSTonline – But Thatcher was not soft on Europe.
MICOSSI – A distinction must be made: the enhancement of the internal market and the Big Bang of finance were perfectly consistent with the best European spirit. Thatcher's battles were economic battles, over the market, over budget repayments and bureaucracy. She obviously rejected political and institutional involvement in a closed Europe and she considered the Westminster Parliament non-negotiable by virtue of strong national pride. But her positions on Europe were far removed from the sense of estrangement that drives the United Kingdom today towards the exit door. At the time, England was committed to Europe, even though she carried a different conception from the French and German ones.
FIRSTonline – And what do you think of Thatcher's anti-euro stance?
MICOSSI – The Lady was a staunch defender of the autonomy of national economic policy. Peralto, it should be remembered that in her time the euro was still a project to come. The United Kingdom then effectively joined the Common Exchange Rate Mechanism - the EMS, as it was called then, and it seems to me that it was a choice of the government led by John Major - but only to be expelled from it shortly afterwards, in the crisis which saw it involved at the forefront Italy. It is in this episode that the British establishment's growing opposition to the euro is rooted. It should also be recognized that the presence in the United Kingdom of the most important financial center in the world - which was made possible by the liberalization of the Stock Exchange in the early XNUMXs, decided precisely by Mrs Thatcher - is not easily reconcilable with the adoption of a common with other countries with much less developed financial structures.
FIRSTonline – Thinking about the Falklands War, shouldn't we talk about a line with nationalist traits rather than national pride?
MICOSSI – The Lady expressed a line of national pride that I don't think ever bordered on nationalism. Frankly, I don't agree with today's dismissive judgments: in Thatcher's positions I see neither nationalism nor populism but rather the expression of a strong personality inspired by a clear vision and strong political determination. And, sooner or later, history will do her justice, although of course not all that glitters is gold.
