Margaret Thatcher's deregulation of the City a myth, says thinktank

Conservative prime minister actually increased state regulation of financial sector, according to Institute for Economic Affairs

The free-market thinktank that inspired many of Margaret Thatcher's reforms has now turned critic of the Iron Lady's shakeup of the City in the 1980s, suggesting it increased state regulation of the financial sector, making it too burdensome.

While the left has blamed the liberalisation of finance under Thatcher for the crisis that paralysed the banking system and led to the deepest UK recession of the post-war era, the Institute for Economic Affairs says the 1980s involved private regulation being replaced by less effective statutory regulation.