Pirie describes how his group devised and refined many of the headline policies implemented by Thatcher and John Major. He claims (and produces plenty of evidence to support it) either full or partial credit for the privatisation of the railways and other industries, for the contracting-out of public services to private companies, for the poll tax, the sale of council houses, the internal markets in education and health, the establishment of private prisons, GP fundholding and commissioning and, later, for George Osborne's tax policies.