Jace
Just to set the record straight, the high inflation of the mid '70's to early '80's was caused by the OPEC oil shock in the mid '70's. The unions also played the stupid card, and boy, they got their b*lls cut off by Maggie. The world was still adjusting to higher energy prices, I remember being issued with a petrol ration book. It was common knowledge that whoever won the '79 election would have North Sea oil revenues to play with, and at least two terms in power. No wonder things got better for a short while.
In 1988 Nigel Lawson also made the huge mistake of signalling the removal of dual mortgage interest tax relief, (it made it very tax-efficient for couples to take out a mortgage together) six months ahead of actually effecting the decision, which created first a housing bubble and then a crash. By 1989, interest rates were back to 18% or more (base at 15%) in an effort to control inflation, and the building industry was on it's knees.
I was a partner in a joinery, which could not survive the massive interest rates plus a recession in the housing market. We lost the business and the house, in the early 90's, after hanging on by our fingernails for a couple of years. Businesses that had been established for a hundred years and more folded too.
But the great evil Maggie and Co did was to increase the gap between rich and poor, partly by cutting tax rates for the better off. Exponentially. And to New Labour's great shame, they did nothing to bring society back together again by shrinking the gap between rich and poor.
Labour's main initiative in this area was not the redistribution of the tax burden, but rather to increase means-tested benefits to the poor. We now have the crazy situation that some people on means tested benefits alone are above the tax threshold. All makes work for the beaurocrats to do.
So now I hope for legislation to loosen the grip of the two big parties, who have over the last forty years proved that their vision is to narrow, their greed too great, and their hearts in the wrong place.