Her starting point was as simple as it was dogmatic: in short, private competition good, public monopoly bad. Working from this starting point, Thatcher’s three governments (and Major’s two subsequent ones for that matter) progressively moved to privatise virtually all of our key industries, from coal and cars, gas and telecoms, through to the national rail and airline networks.

Retrospectively, the privatisation fad of the 80s and 90s can be seen as one of the most ambitious national economic experiments in recent history, one which has done much to shape the nation we now live in. It can also be seen as part of a broader global political shift to the right over the past quarter century, with the accompanying enthusiastic embrace of neoliberal economic policies.

It is incredible to think now, but even as recently as 1987 Labour was promising to re-nationalise the ‘family silver’ if elected. Since then, of course, New Labour has embraced the private sector ever more enthusiastically, starting in earnest with its historic abandonment of Clause IV in 1995, and culminating in the tragic farce that is the private finance initiative (PFI).

If anything, New Labour has taken the Thatcherite love affair with private industry to places where even the Iron Lady might have feared to tread. As a result nationalisation has become the policy that dare not speak its name - except when private banks lend themselves into an almighty mess, of course.

Over the past year or two, however, other nations – many of them more politically progressive than our own - have finally started to question the wisdom of allowing private ownership of key national industries. And it is a debate to be strongly welcomed.

In New Zealand, for example, the government has recently re-nationalised the rail industry nearly two decades after taking into private hands, calling the experience of privatisation a ‘painful lesson’. The Argentine government, meanwhile, has announced the re-nationalisation of the state airline, Aerolineas Argentinas, thereby rescuing the company from years of under-investment, as well as the imminent prospect of bankruptcy.

In both cases the government reckoned that national ownership was in the best national interest, and that private industry had failed to provide the best deal for the nation as a whole. Around the world more and more policymakers are engaging in similar debates, particularly in light of the problems afflicting the global economy, problems which will inevitably force many corporate entities out of existence.

Surely now then, with Labour painfully free of any real political ideas, is the time to reopen the debate in this country about the relative merits and demerits of public ownership.

For some industries - particularly some of the key monopolies – are surely totally ill-suited to private competition. Take for example our own rail network, a sorry tale of privatisation gone horribly wrong. Since privatisation in 1993 the rail network has gone from adequate to poor to appalling, where it still resolutely resides, in the process wasting tens of billions of pounds of public money.

Only the remorselessly optimistic would deny that our trains are dangerously overcrowded and prohibitively expensive – that is if they run at all, of course. So poor has the network become as a result of decades of under-investment (including in public ownership under Thatcher), that booking a train at the weekend is now equivalent to a straight toss-up between rail and bus.

Except for some lucky shareholders and a few ludicrously overpaid executives, privatisation of the railways has been a spectacular failure. That is especially obvious to those who have travelled to the continent in recent years - try using the Italian or German rail system to inspire wistful thoughts of ‘how it might have been’.

And the real comedy, of course, is that we taxpayers still subsidise the ‘privatised’ network, to the tune of £6.3 billion in 2007 alone.

The truth that the government refuses to even acknowledge is that some industries might well be better suited to public ownership; natural monopolies, for example - those industries where any meaningful competition is impossible, or industries too important to the national interest to be allowed to be run into the ground in the profitable interests of a minority, or even sold off altogether into foreign hands.

Rail, water and mail are three examples of such industries. After, do you have any choice of what train to take, tap water to drink or stamps to use? But we need all three to be affordable and of the highest quality to enable to live our lives properly.

One can only hope that there are some in government that understand the folly of this dogmatic belief in the power of unfettered markets. Most likely they have been kept quiet by the Labour executive amid their paranoia about being branded ‘Old Labour’. Now, however, is the time for them to speak out, to spark a real public debate about what we want our key industries to look like in a generation’s time.