There is no alternative (shortened as TINA) was a slogan which Margaret Thatcher, the conservative British Prime Minister used often. In economics, politics, and political economy, it has come to mean that "there is no alternative" to economic liberalism, that free markets, free trade, and capitalist globalization are the best way for modern societies to develop.
The phrase may be traced to its emphatic use by nineteenth-century classical liberal thinker Herbert Spencer.
Cabinet minister Norman St John-Stevas, one of the leading "wets" nicknamed Thatcher "Tina".
In the early nineties, Francis Fukuyama wrote a book named The End of History and the Last Man, which in a similar strain argued that liberal democracy had triumphed over communism and the historical struggle between political systems was over (though there could still be future events).
According to TINA, economic liberalism is the only valid remaining ideology.
Famous quotes containing the words there is no, there is and/or alternative:
“Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,
it is still there and always there....”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“There, there is only order and beauty,
Luxury, quietness, and pleasure.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)