The literal claim "They did not remove regulations" is contradicted by concrete evidence that specific important rules were indeed removed. The Big Bang (1986) abolished fixed commission charges on the London Stock Exchange, ended the "single capacity" rule separating stockjobbers from stockbrokers, and effectively ended the separation between retail and investment banking — which Chancellor Nigel Lawson later acknowledged as an "unforeseen consequence." The FSA also discontinued the Bank of England's formal capital "target ratio" system, replacing it with a more informal approach. Additionally, the FSA explicitly adopted a "light-touch," principles-based enforcement philosophy, with its own Director of Enforcement stating in 2006 that the FSA was "not an enforcement-led regulator." Farage himself even contradicts the absolute claim in the very next sentence, acknowledging "they took away some good basic rules." However, the broader spirit of Farage's argument — that the overall regulatory burden increased dramatically rather than decreased — is well-supported. The IEA paper "Thatcher and the Myth of Deregulation" documents that from 1979 to 2010, the ratio of regulators to finance workers went from 1:11,000 to 1:300, and statutory regulation of financial markets "unambiguously" increased under Thatcher. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 created a comprehensive statutory framework replacing self-regulation, with the FSA's handbook running to 8,000 pages. Administrative costs of regulation grew sixfold between 2000 and the mid-2010s. The creation of the FSA consolidated nine regulatory bodies into one but with expanded scope (mortgage regulation from 2004, general insurance from 2005, etc.). The picture is therefore mixed: specific important rules were removed and enforcement became lighter, but the aggregate quantity and scope of statutory regulation increased enormously. The absolute statement "They did not remove regulations" is false, but the underlying point about a net increase in regulation is substantially accurate. Sources: - IEA, "Thatcher and the Myth of Deregulation" (https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/DP_Thatcher-the%20myth%20of%20deregulation_web_May.pdf) - Oxford Review of Economic Policy, "Labour's Record on Financial Regulation" (https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grt005) - LegCo Hong Kong, "Evolution of financial regulatory regime in the United Kingdom" (https://www.legco.gov.hk/research-publications/english/2023in01-evolution-of-financial-regulatory-regime-in-the-united-kingdom-20230119-e.pdf) - Wikipedia, "Big Bang (financial markets)" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_(financial_markets)) - History & Policy, "British and American banking in historical perspective" (https://historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/british-and-american-banking-in-historical-perspective-beware-of-false-prec/) - Pinsent Masons, "FSA abandons 'light touch' regulation" (https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/fsa-abandons-light-touch-regulation) - BBC News, "Bank regulation approach 'wrong'" (http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7910699.stm)