Abroad, Britain's reputation lies in shreds. At home, an exhausted government is drifting, rudderless, from one crisis to the next.
Unemployment is rising sharply. The public finances are in chaos.
The unions are threatening havoc and inflation is set to soar...
This sounds very much like 2009 but, in fact, is 1979 - the year Margaret Thatcher came to power.
It has been said that the job of the Labour Party is to wreck the economy and then leave the mess for the Tories to clean up. And that is what happened in 1979.
Between 1974 and 1979 (Harold Wilson was PM between 1974 and 1976 and James Callaghan was PM between 1976 and 1979), Labour were in power, and those years saw huge unemployment, riots, the Winter of Discontent, families living in candlelight due to power failures and a bankrupt Britain having to go cap in hand to the IMF.
But in 1979, James "Sunny Jim" Callaghan and the Labour Government were ousted and the Tories came to power, led by a grocer's daughter from Lincolnshire, Margaret Thatcher. She was Britain's first female Prime Minister (though not its first female Head of Government).
Despite sneers from the Left, Maggie helped turn this country's fortunes around. The Tories are, in all likelihood, due to regain power in 2010 under David Cameron, but can he be compared to Maggie?
Where is the new Margaret Thatcher to rescue us?
By Daily Mail Comment
29th December 2009
Daily Mail
Britain's greatest peacetime Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher was Britain's 73rd Prime Minister. Her reign was the longest of any British Prime Minister since that of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil between 1895 and 1902.
Abroad, our reputation lies in shreds. At home, an exhausted government is drifting, rudderless, from one crisis to the next.
Unemployment is rising sharply. The public finances are in chaos. The unions are threatening havoc and inflation is set to soar...
Labour's James "Sunny Jim" Callaghan was British Prime Minister between 1976 and 1979 and was notable for being PM during the Winter of Discontent and for introducing cats' eyes to Britain's roads. His reign was ended by Margaret Thatcher. He died aged 92 in March 2005.
No, this isn't the tail-end of 2009 - though the parallels are painfully obvious.
This is the Britain of early 1979, in the dying months of the last Labour administration, as brought vividly back to life by papers released today under the 30-year rule.
Then, as now, our country's problems were stacking up so fast that national ruin seemed inevitable.
But as the papers so graphically remind us, waiting in the wings in the spring of 1979 was a politician with a radical blueprint for revival and the indomitable courage to turn it into action.
Even 30 years on, Margaret Thatcher remains a hugely controversial figure.
For many on the bien-pensant Left, she is still the butt of sneers, reviled as the petit-bourgeois grocer's daughter who ruthlessly destroyed jobs in the old nationalised industries.
For growing numbers of others, however - and the Mail has been among them from the start - she is recognised as the woman who rescued Britain from the edge of the precipice and did more for ordinary workers than anyone since the war.
Whichever side you may be on, it's impossible not to admire the sheer vigour and straight-talking honesty, brought to light in the 30-year-rule papers, with which she stood up for Britain and set about her task of reconstruction.
The Winter of Discontent, 1978/79
Winter of discontent: Rubbish piles up in London's Leicester Square during the Winter of Discontent
The Winter of Discontent occurred in Britain during the winter of 1978/79. There were strikes throughout the country by local authority trade unions demanding larger pay rises for their members and because the government of James Callaghan sought to hold a pay freeze to control inflation. The Labour government attempted to control inflation by imposing rules on the public sector that pay rises be kept below 5%, as an example to the private sector. Those who went on strike included gravediggers and refuse collectors. As a resuly, corpses went unburied and stinking refuse started to pile up in the streets. The strikes were largely over by February 1979, and that year saw Margaret Thatcher and the Tories sweep to power.
Foreign presidents, Tory grandees and obstructive civil servants can hardly have known what hit them when this whirlwind blew into Downing Street on May 3, 1979.
At one moment, we see her delivering a blistering handbagging to French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, demanding a rebate for Britain from the European budget.
The next, she's rebuking President Jimmy Carter for America's refusal to sell guns to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, or slapping down Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin for claiming he hasn't enough weapons to pose a threat. ('You should not be so modest,' she tells him.)
Britain's longest-serving Prime Minister was Robert Walpole, who ruled from April 1721 to February 1742. Events during his rule included the South Sea Bubble and the War of Jenkins' Ear, a nine year conflict between Britain and Spain which started after British sailor Robert Jenkins exhibited his ear in the Houses of Parliament which he said had be cut off by Spanish sailors who boarded his ship. Britain's shortest-serving PM was William Pulteney, who served for just two DAYS in 1746 as he was unable to find more than one person who would agree to serve in his Cabinet. Frederick North was Prime Minister during the American war of Independence. Britain's youngest Prime Minister was Pitt the Younger, who became PM in 1783 at the age of just 24. The only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated whilst in office was Spencer Perceval who was shot dead by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812.
Or here she is, scrawling a blunt note on her Chancellor's over-cautious plan for cuts: 'This will not do'.
Or again, on a proposal to prune civil service numbers: 'What are we doing with 566,000 that cannot be done with 500,000?'
What a contrast her plain-speaking pursuit of the national interest - and her determination to do what was necessary, however unpopular - makes with the government by focus-group and gimmick we've seen since she was ousted.
Baroness Thatcher with current Conservative Party leader David Cameron recently
The tragedy is that, in many ways, we're in a worse position today than in 1979.
Then, Mrs Thatcher was helped by the widespread acceptance that our desperate plight demanded desperate measures - a fact which, much to its credit, the outgoing Labour Government had begun to address with spending cuts.
Today, the true depth of the crisis has been concealed by ministers determined to carry on their reckless borrowing spree until after the election.
The result is that even after a decade that has seen the lowest growth since the war - and the worst stock market returns since the Great Depression - we're not feeling the crisis in our wallets as we did 30 years ago.
Not yet. But it's a certainty that we will.
When the full, appalling horror of the Government's debt finally breaks over the nation, where will we find the next Margaret Thatcher to pull Britain through?
dailymail.co.uk
Unemployment is rising sharply. The public finances are in chaos.
The unions are threatening havoc and inflation is set to soar...
This sounds very much like 2009 but, in fact, is 1979 - the year Margaret Thatcher came to power.
It has been said that the job of the Labour Party is to wreck the economy and then leave the mess for the Tories to clean up. And that is what happened in 1979.
Between 1974 and 1979 (Harold Wilson was PM between 1974 and 1976 and James Callaghan was PM between 1976 and 1979), Labour were in power, and those years saw huge unemployment, riots, the Winter of Discontent, families living in candlelight due to power failures and a bankrupt Britain having to go cap in hand to the IMF.
But in 1979, James "Sunny Jim" Callaghan and the Labour Government were ousted and the Tories came to power, led by a grocer's daughter from Lincolnshire, Margaret Thatcher. She was Britain's first female Prime Minister (though not its first female Head of Government).
Despite sneers from the Left, Maggie helped turn this country's fortunes around. The Tories are, in all likelihood, due to regain power in 2010 under David Cameron, but can he be compared to Maggie?
Where is the new Margaret Thatcher to rescue us?
By Daily Mail Comment
29th December 2009
Daily Mail
Britain's greatest peacetime Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher was Britain's 73rd Prime Minister. Her reign was the longest of any British Prime Minister since that of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil between 1895 and 1902.
Abroad, our reputation lies in shreds. At home, an exhausted government is drifting, rudderless, from one crisis to the next.
Unemployment is rising sharply. The public finances are in chaos. The unions are threatening havoc and inflation is set to soar...
Labour's James "Sunny Jim" Callaghan was British Prime Minister between 1976 and 1979 and was notable for being PM during the Winter of Discontent and for introducing cats' eyes to Britain's roads. His reign was ended by Margaret Thatcher. He died aged 92 in March 2005.
No, this isn't the tail-end of 2009 - though the parallels are painfully obvious.
This is the Britain of early 1979, in the dying months of the last Labour administration, as brought vividly back to life by papers released today under the 30-year rule.
Then, as now, our country's problems were stacking up so fast that national ruin seemed inevitable.
But as the papers so graphically remind us, waiting in the wings in the spring of 1979 was a politician with a radical blueprint for revival and the indomitable courage to turn it into action.
Even 30 years on, Margaret Thatcher remains a hugely controversial figure.
For many on the bien-pensant Left, she is still the butt of sneers, reviled as the petit-bourgeois grocer's daughter who ruthlessly destroyed jobs in the old nationalised industries.
For growing numbers of others, however - and the Mail has been among them from the start - she is recognised as the woman who rescued Britain from the edge of the precipice and did more for ordinary workers than anyone since the war.
Whichever side you may be on, it's impossible not to admire the sheer vigour and straight-talking honesty, brought to light in the 30-year-rule papers, with which she stood up for Britain and set about her task of reconstruction.
The Winter of Discontent, 1978/79
Winter of discontent: Rubbish piles up in London's Leicester Square during the Winter of Discontent
The Winter of Discontent occurred in Britain during the winter of 1978/79. There were strikes throughout the country by local authority trade unions demanding larger pay rises for their members and because the government of James Callaghan sought to hold a pay freeze to control inflation. The Labour government attempted to control inflation by imposing rules on the public sector that pay rises be kept below 5%, as an example to the private sector. Those who went on strike included gravediggers and refuse collectors. As a resuly, corpses went unburied and stinking refuse started to pile up in the streets. The strikes were largely over by February 1979, and that year saw Margaret Thatcher and the Tories sweep to power.
Foreign presidents, Tory grandees and obstructive civil servants can hardly have known what hit them when this whirlwind blew into Downing Street on May 3, 1979.
At one moment, we see her delivering a blistering handbagging to French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, demanding a rebate for Britain from the European budget.
The next, she's rebuking President Jimmy Carter for America's refusal to sell guns to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, or slapping down Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin for claiming he hasn't enough weapons to pose a threat. ('You should not be so modest,' she tells him.)
Britain's longest-serving Prime Minister was Robert Walpole, who ruled from April 1721 to February 1742. Events during his rule included the South Sea Bubble and the War of Jenkins' Ear, a nine year conflict between Britain and Spain which started after British sailor Robert Jenkins exhibited his ear in the Houses of Parliament which he said had be cut off by Spanish sailors who boarded his ship. Britain's shortest-serving PM was William Pulteney, who served for just two DAYS in 1746 as he was unable to find more than one person who would agree to serve in his Cabinet. Frederick North was Prime Minister during the American war of Independence. Britain's youngest Prime Minister was Pitt the Younger, who became PM in 1783 at the age of just 24. The only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated whilst in office was Spencer Perceval who was shot dead by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812.
Or here she is, scrawling a blunt note on her Chancellor's over-cautious plan for cuts: 'This will not do'.
Or again, on a proposal to prune civil service numbers: 'What are we doing with 566,000 that cannot be done with 500,000?'
What a contrast her plain-speaking pursuit of the national interest - and her determination to do what was necessary, however unpopular - makes with the government by focus-group and gimmick we've seen since she was ousted.
Baroness Thatcher with current Conservative Party leader David Cameron recently
The tragedy is that, in many ways, we're in a worse position today than in 1979.
Then, Mrs Thatcher was helped by the widespread acceptance that our desperate plight demanded desperate measures - a fact which, much to its credit, the outgoing Labour Government had begun to address with spending cuts.
Today, the true depth of the crisis has been concealed by ministers determined to carry on their reckless borrowing spree until after the election.
The result is that even after a decade that has seen the lowest growth since the war - and the worst stock market returns since the Great Depression - we're not feeling the crisis in our wallets as we did 30 years ago.
Not yet. But it's a certainty that we will.
When the full, appalling horror of the Government's debt finally breaks over the nation, where will we find the next Margaret Thatcher to pull Britain through?
dailymail.co.uk
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