benefit of privatisation in that it helped to encourage wider share ownership and to
create a share-owning democracy, with increased sympathies towards capitalist modes
of production (and possibly the Conservative Party!). Concomitantly, the sale of state
assets also served to reduce the size of the public sector borrowing requirement – since
revenue from sales was counted as negative public expenditure – and this helped to
reduce the government’s debt burden and to take some of the pressure off interest rates,
as well as releasing funds for use by the private sector.