The first North Sea gas was landed during Harold Wilson's first administration; first North Sea oil during Wilson second administration. So you missed the opportunity to point out that the missed opportunity to set up a wealth fund was due to Labours!
Mrs. T would probably have been the Prime Minister best placed to to set up a fund, in the late 80s, when she had substantially reduced our national debt. But I agree that there is a strong possibility that one of us successors would have started spending it.
Robert Walpole set up a fund to reduce the national debt but when they’re going got tough, he started spending it.
It was the decision, after 2001, based on Gordon Brown's old-fashioned taxcandvsoend socialism, to open the spigots and increase public sounding (on, most notably, the bottomless maw that is the NHS) that moved UK public finances from surplus into their now habitual deficit.
The ideas that a SWF was practicable in the 1980s is risible. It wasn't fashionable in economic or financial terms, and the notion tgat any government would have (a) separated fossil fuel royalties andvtax revenue into a pure investment vehicle; and (b) not pilfered it at will is equally laughable.
And, pace Healy's usual historical and economic illiteracy, oil amd gas was discovered in the North Sea in the 1960s. It came fully on stream in the late 1970s and the 1979 Iranian o8l shock made sterling into a petrocurrency that mafe our exports expensive and imports cheap - a much bigger economic impact that Thatcerite ecomin rigorous.
The first North Sea gas was landed during Harold Wilson's first administration; first North Sea oil during Wilson second administration. So you missed the opportunity to point out that the missed opportunity to set up a wealth fund was due to Labours!
Mrs. T would probably have been the Prime Minister best placed to to set up a fund, in the late 80s, when she had substantially reduced our national debt. But I agree that there is a strong possibility that one of us successors would have started spending it.
Robert Walpole set up a fund to reduce the national debt but when they’re going got tough, he started spending it.
Chancellor: " Sovereign Wealth Fund? What the Hell's that? Let's just blow it"
It was the decision, after 2001, based on Gordon Brown's old-fashioned taxcandvsoend socialism, to open the spigots and increase public sounding (on, most notably, the bottomless maw that is the NHS) that moved UK public finances from surplus into their now habitual deficit.
The ideas that a SWF was practicable in the 1980s is risible. It wasn't fashionable in economic or financial terms, and the notion tgat any government would have (a) separated fossil fuel royalties andvtax revenue into a pure investment vehicle; and (b) not pilfered it at will is equally laughable.
And, pace Healy's usual historical and economic illiteracy, oil amd gas was discovered in the North Sea in the 1960s. It came fully on stream in the late 1970s and the 1979 Iranian o8l shock made sterling into a petrocurrency that mafe our exports expensive and imports cheap - a much bigger economic impact that Thatcerite ecomin rigorous.