Since you mentioned the 1980s, @andyburnham, here’s a reminder of what was achieved: • Top rate of income tax: 83% → 40% • Savings income taxed at up to 98% in 1979 — surcharge abolished • Basic rate: 33% → 25% • Inflation: 21.9% peak (1980) → 2.4% (1986) • Days lost to strikes: 29.5 million (1979) → 1.9 million (1990) • Real take-home pay for the average earner: up by a third • Right to Buy: over a million council tenants became homeowners • Home ownership: 55% → 67% • Individual shareholders: 3 million → 11 million — one in four adults • Foreign holidays: roughly doubled • Homes with a telephone: two-thirds → nearly nine in ten • Pensioners’ average incomes: up around 30% in real terms • Infant mortality: down almost 40% • Real GDP: up by almost a third • GDP per head outgrew France, Germany and Italy in the 1980s • Manufacturing productivity: slowest growth in the G7 in the 1970s → fastest in the 1980s • Self-employed: 1.9 million → 3.5 million • Nissan to Sunderland, Toyota to Derby, Honda to Swindon • Britain became a net oil exporter • London restored as the world’s financial capital in 1986 • Budget surpluses three years running — Britain repaid debt, 1987–90 • National debt: 47% of GDP → 28% • State spending: ~45% of GDP → ~39% • The civil service: 732,000 → 565,000 • Corporation tax: 52% → 35%; the small firms’ rate: 42% → 25% • Personal tax allowances: up more than 25% in real terms • Higher rates of income tax: nine → one • Death duties: fourteen rates → one • Exchange controls scrapped after 40 years • 40+ nationalised businesses privatised — 600,000 employees moved to the private sector • The 33 big state industries: took ~£500m from taxpayers in 1980 → paid £8.4bn to the Exchequer by 1987 • British Steel: world-record loss-maker (1980/81) → £733m profit (1989/90) • BT, 1984: the largest share offer the world had ever seen • “Tell Sid” broke the record again in 1986 • British Airways: nationalised loss-maker → profitable, private, “the world’s favourite airline” • The Channel Tunnel launched and entirely privately financed Over to you.