The narrative that she 'saved' us from some fiscal Armageddon, like your trajectory theorem, assumes absolutely NOTHING changes and the alternate-powers-that-be would have simply let us career, moribund, off of a fiscal cliff.
Hypotheticals are largely useless, but by and large I believe that we are all forced to react to events. Just as a Labour government would have had to embark upon an austerity programme given a victory in 2010, a Labour or SDP-Liberal government would have no doubt had to 'deal' with the unions and the other problems subsequent to 1980.
This is all completely true, but the point I was making was that it's easy to compare the data for the 70's vs the 80's and suggest that "x" happened, when the real question should be asking what would have happened without her. I daresay you're right, Labour would have been forced into action, but they lacked one thing the Tories had in abundance - money from non-Union sources. The political reality of it is that it would have taken something akin to electoral suicide for Labour to deal with the unions with anything like the strength required (even if you think Thatcher went too far with it).
Its likewise with things like BT... the oft brought up "6 months to install a telephone line" assumes that BT would NEVER have gotten quicker or better at installing telephone lines. Is that really realistic?
Nope, it's not, but nor is it forgiveable, imo. It's entirely possible they would improve, but it's entirely possible they would not, or that they would improve and then drop back and then improve and then drop back etc.
I personally have no problem with nationalisation of the telcos. I think any industry which is by nature, a potentially disrupted and technologically competitive industry, SHOULD be open to the market. Areas in which I don't think it has been successful are all industries in which it was obvious an oligopoly would take hold. Only so many companies can afford energy exploration and R&D, only so many companies can operate our rail networks (because we only have so much rail network to give!)... Customers RELY on the services those industries provide, they should never have been allowed to cabal control away from us. The selling of some sovereign assets has facilitated that. It is the concentration of market power into fewer and fewer hands that is toxic IMO; privatisation should be evaluated not only on what short term gains we can reap, but what the long term consequences will be for that market in Britain. Capitalism encourages consolidation, it is the most effective way to grow and shut out others, but its one of the things we need be most wary of in anything we deem essential.
I think it's worth noting that HMG can't really afford energy exploration either. It's a hugely costly thing, and it's only the hope of enormous profits that means investors dump truck loads of money into companies that explore for this stuff (most of whom fail). I'd much rather we privatise the finding and acquisition and just tax the shit out of it.
Even services that people rely on that can forced to compete, we're just really bad at drawing up contracts. The private sector does it all the time - at the studio I used to work at, we had no capability for filming, we only did CG. We used to outsource the filming to other companies, and we'd get them to bid for the job. The one that gave us the best bid would get the job, but we'd have contracts in place to ensure that if they failed in any way, we'd get our money back plus damages. Now, for the government, they have slightly different interests - they don't want it to go wrong in the first place, because them getting back "the money" is no use if people can't get the train to work, for example. But there are still ways of organising contracts that make it really, really, really unaffordable to fuck it up. It's also worth remembering, when talking about privatising in this way, that we're not comparing it to a perfect nirvana of service - the public sector has its share of problems, too. The question is really which one is going to have fewer problems, and I think that's really only a judgement one can make on a case-by-case basis.
