This fletter appeared in The Guardian on 29th January 2020. The Government has now determined there should be no Huawei involvement in the UK 5G network by 2027 but the point about Thatcher still stands. Johnson has had to reap what she sowed
There is some irony in the Johnson government agreeing a limited involvement of Huawei in Britain’s 5G network (Editorial, 29 January). Without it Britain’s telecoms network would lag behind others, with an impact on the country’s industrial infrastructure.
What are the origins of the crisis? These lie with Johnson’s predecessor Margaret Thatcher, whose governments laid waste to a good deal of British industry, preferring a financial model of profit making, and privatised many public utilities – in this case telecoms, where a case for national investment should have been made. Johnson is now reaping what his predecessor sowed.
Keith Flett
London
[…] not least in rural and small towns, can be traced back to Margaret Thatcher, as my colleague Keith pointed out back in January. Decades-long reliance on ‘the market’, on privatisation and on an abandonment of […]