"Fortunately Hayek never had any influence on Thatcher's policies. (Her chief economic adviser in these years was Alan Walters, a Friedman-style monetarist.) Equally, and perhaps also happily, Thatcher had no understanding of Hayek's ideas. If it was true that she carried about with her for a time a copy of Hayek's magnum opus, The Constitution of Liberty (1960), she cannot have read its postscript, "Why I am not a Conservative", in which Hayek explains that he rejects conservatism because it lacks a vision of human progress. A case can be made that Thatcher was no conservative, either – at least if being conservative includes an aversion to policies that impose deep changes on inherited social institutions. But this is a view that goes only so far. Unlike Hayek, Thatcher understood and accepted the political limits of market economics."
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandBritish peersWomen academics from EnglandChemists from England
Original Language: English
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John Gray, "The Friedrich Hayek I knew, and what he got right – and wrong" (30 July 2015)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher
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