For example, all developed countries experienced some sort of boom during the 1980s; and so any criticism of, say, our property boom, would have to acknowledge that the US and Japan experienced similar conditions. So claims by politicians that “Britain has the fastest growth in the EU” or whatever always have to be taken with a pinch of salt.Second, you have to make some allowance for influences common to all countries at the time. This is not just a question of looking at measures of growth or unemployment from peak to peak, or from trough to trough, but also adjusting for the cycle when comparing performance with that of other countries. So her claims do deserve some kind of answer: is it possible to make a sensible economic assessment of the Thatcher years, divorced from political point-scoring? And if so, how might the balance sheet stack up?There are three fundamental difficulties in adding up the score First, you have to try to adjust for the economic cycle. In her own mind, her period in office was an economic triumph.Many people, particularly those who were seduced by the late 1980s euphoria into borrowing heavily, would simply not recognise this view. The memoirs actually cover her rise to power – the pre-Downing Street years – but most of her interviews were devoted to a justification of her policies in office.One particular point sprang out: tackled on public spending and taxation, she argued that she had cut the rate of income tax and public spending, despite having inherited a large budget deficit, which she had turned into a surplus.

They misread the dangers to the economy of the stock market crash; they underestimated the interaction between financial deregulation and the boom – they deregulated at the wrong time in the economic cycle; and they ignored the warning signals from the very rapid growth of the money supply and the growing current account deficit because, since they were moving into a large fiscal surplus, they thought that economic policy was still quite tight.
This snapshot of economic policy during the Thatcher years sprang to mind last week when Lady T was puffing her new book in a series of radio interviews. They had established fiscal and monetary stability, the recovery was secure, and they had made many of the necessary structural changes to the economy that would, in time, lead to faster growth rates in the future

But then they made a series of mistakes. Up to then, he argued, they had really got economic policy right. A COUPLE of years ago a friend at the top of the Treasury confessed to me that he felt they blew it in 1986 and 1987. GEC could surely have stayed in the top division, riding the wave as demand for computers, consumer electronics and electronic devices of every sort exploded It had the technology and management skills It could have done so much more for the economy It is a shame it did not.. It is a bete noire among its own suppliers, who consider it one of the worst in the late-payers league.But its real sin is one of omission. But GEC has few skills in mass marketing, and the VSEL bid suggests that Weinstock has changed his mind.

The defence cake may have shrunk, but if GEC can grab a big enough share of it, it is more enticing than ever. The Government has abandoned its insistence on national competition, and seems to want a single national champion to take on foreign competition. Weinstock is content to be that champion.GEC has come under fire from other quarters. In the old cost-plus days, it was seen as a drain on the taxpayer when its programmes overran (the most notorious was the airborne early-warning aircraft, cancelled when it was five years late). First, the Tories demanded better value for money and more competition; then the Cold War ended. A few years ago, it looked as though GEC was casting around for ways to turn swords into ploughshares – Marconi was looking at civilian applications for its wireless technology, for example.

Here was an area where Whitehall’s “cost-plus” method of pricing meant it was impossible not to make a profit, and where the government would finance much of the necessary research. GEC-Marconi became the core, developing sophisticated radar, weapons control and other electronic systems.Life has become much tougher for defence contractors in the last decade. It understood how to do business with governments, and Weinstock made canny use of his contacts – Lord Prior, the former Cabinet minister, became GEC’s chairman, while a former under-secretary at the Department of Trade and Industry became his export director.The area that really appealed to Weinstock’s conservatism was defence. When the UK market dried up, it was able to switch successfully to overseas markets. Power generation is now in the hands of GEC-Alsthom, consumer electronics is shared with General Electric of the US, while the telecoms operation GPT is partly owned by Siemens.So what did Weinstock do with the array of high technology he controlled by 1970? He ran hard with two sectors – power generation and defence – and ignored most of the rest.In the late 1960s, power generation was still firmly in government hands: an established player could be sure to be given a share of what was then a fast-growing market GEC invested, and built up a powerful presence. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Siemens is doing more for the German economy – in terms of technology, jobs, wealth creation – than GEC is for the UK.Weinstock implicitly acknowledged that size mattered by assembling a series of joint ventures in the late 1980s.