The ideology developed by
british prime minister Margaret Thatcher over the 80's, which may be seen as the final
offspring of the long tradition of
British conservatism.
It was basically an extreme form of
economical liberalism, relying on the assumption that in a totally free-market
society, both production and distribution of goods and services reach an optimum. Only the foul and the
lazy would be left aside, and therefore should not be helped in any way.
Well, that was the
theory. In practice, the good old habits of
authoritarianism quickly re-emerged whenever the
government thought necessary - that is, quite often. It soon became obvious that the global policy was in fact more akin to
right-wing conservatism than to anything else.
The result was quite
ugly. To be honest, it is said that the previous
Labour Party government had already made things very
bad.
See
Von Hayek.