At Question Time Mr Blair pursued much the same unprincipled course.For the real question is not whether a regulator, in this case Professor Stephen Littlechild, spoke out of turn, so lowering the value of shares, and, if he did, what was the state of the Government’s knowledge. The question is whether bizarre creatures such as Professor Littlechild – or Dr Ian Byatt with water, Mr Don Cruickshank with telecommunications and Ms Clare Spottiswoode with gas – should exist at all; to say nothing of the “franchisers” who are now laying the railways satisfactorily to waste. The big institutions were none too pleased either.With its unfailing aptitude for grasping the wrong end of any stick that may be lying around, the People’s Party took the side of the pension funds and the share-purchasing Thatcherites. Its representative, Dr Jack Cunningham, instead of saying “Serve them right”, absurdly accused the Government of “insider trading”. Following a ruling – if ruling it was – by the electricity regulator that prices had to come down, the latest instalment of electricity privatisation proved something of a frost Share prices went down instead of up This was never meant to happen It was not only the greedy Thatcherites who were angry.

By initially undervaluing the shares, they could guarantee a rapid appreciation and, hence, a secure profit. These sums were usually of the order of a few hundred pounds: not much, but enough to gratify the feckless proletariat who voted so enthusiastically for Lady Thatcher.Last week it all went wrong. Conservative governments found themselves in the happy position of being able to give away money. Nor was it a consequence of any desire by the populace at large to become shareholders, in the sense of persons owning an appreciating asset over a number of years It had everything to do with making a quick profit. Mr John Major’s government is doing the same, with its crazed privatisation of British Rail.

But we should be clear about the reason why the original privatisations were as well liked as they proved to be.It had nothing to do with increased competition, for there was none, except in telephones. The privatisation pro-gramme, the biggest piece of public plunder since the Dissolution of the Monasteries, came about largely by accident. When it proved popular, Lady Thatcher’s governments expanded its scope. Corporations were forced to “buy British” when they did not want to.It may be that the whole conception of the public corporation was wrong Aneurin Bevan certainly thought so. He believed that nationalised industries should be run not by a board but by a minister directly responsible to Parliament: in much the same way as, until recently, the Post Office was administered by the Postmaster-General.

What is certain is that public corporations were never allowed to operate as had originally been intended.After 1979 the Conservatives began dismantling them and replacing them with private monopolies. At some times, for electoral reasons, prices had to be kept artificially low; at others, under pressure from the Treasury, forced upwards The electricity industry was used to subsidise coal. Instead they preferred to go about their business in a more English manner: through hints, nudges, discreet pressure, occasionally shameless bullying Invariably interventions were political. They were shy of giving those formal directions for which the nationalisation Acts provided. They were run by bodies known as “Morrisonian public corporations”, after Herbert Morrison’s London Passenger Transport Board of 1933.Ministers could lay down broad policy but not, in theory, interfere with day-to-day running In practice they interfered all the time. Indeed, if Mr Tony Blair promised to restore it, he would be sure of sweeping the country. But coal, gas, electricity and the railways were differently organised.