What is it about the 1970s that Mr Burnham so likes? His keynote speeches tell us he is fighting Margaret Thatcher and intends to reverse what remains of the 1980s reforms she introduced.
The 1970s brought us high inflation. The Labour government over spent and overborrowed, driving government borrowing rates up to an astonishing 15.5%. The government ran out of other peoples’ money to spend and had to go to the IMF to borrow money. The IMF imposed spending cuts on the government as part of the conditions for the loan. Is Mr Burnham keen to replay this sorry drama? The bond markets are warning him he is spending and taxing too much.
Labour put top rate income tax up to 83% or to 98% on savings income. This produced a Brain drain as it was called, as talented, entrepreneurial, successful people queued up to leave, including some of our best pop groups. Today we see a similar exodus of entrepreneurs and people with savings seeking to flee the high taxes.
During the miners strike under Mr Heath there was not enough energy to keep the lights on, so the government imposed a three day working week to cut the demand for power by business to avoid domestic power cuts. Will this government with its dangerous net zero policies have to introduce electricity rationing when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow?
In the 1970s the large number of nationalised industries demonstrated we did not own them but they owned us. They needed large infusions of grant aid and support from taxpayers. They sacked a lot of their staff and delivered poor customer service. Is that to be the fate of Labour’s nationalisations?
Nationalised water regularly rationed supplies with hosepipe bans in the summer, and in 1976 in some regions had to cut off water supply to peoples homes. They needed to go to a standpipe in the street with a bucket. The industry tipped plenty of sewage into rivers and the sea and did not even bother to monitor and report it.
Nationalised BT often made people wait to get a phone line to their home, and for some required them to share a line with the neighbour. You could not then make a call when they were using the phone.
Strikes were common. The Labour government fell after a winter of discontent which had disrupted many pubic services including burying the dead.
In the 1970s we entered the European Community. Tariffs were taken off and there was a major industrial collapse as UK industry was not competitive enough to withstand the shock. The UK’s growth rate halved from the 3.4% we had achieved in the 20 years prior to joining.
September 17, 2026
You talk about a brain drain in the seventies. I have always taken the view that we are well rid of people who love their bank accounts more than their country.
September 17, 2026
What a funny attitude to have they probably, very sensibly, just feel that they can use and invest their money far better than the government can which is often rather better for the UK in general. Indeed governments are so wasteful and their expenditure so poorly directed it is hard not too.
Also leaving the UK (when if overtaxes, adopts the net zero lunacy and regulated to death) is often the only way to stop the government throttling the economy to death – so it can be a highly moral thing to do too.
September 17, 2026
Just voting once every few years for lower taxes and better public services does almost nothing. This as once elected the Government and MPs deliver the reverse higher taxes and worse public services with some counterproductive wars and daft religions like DEI, the Equality Act, the EU lunacy, Net Zero.
Since the 70s engineers and physicist etc. have delivered vast improvements in technology, medicine, production costs… such that we should all have become richer (transistors cost less than 1/ 1000,000,000 of what they did then – alas the state sector, the blob, wars and red tape has largely stolen and squandered all this efficiency.
September 17, 2026
Stephen, typical Socialist mindset
Envy of people who succeed , expectations that their endeavours should be stolen by government to finance the reckless. I left the uk in 77 for 22 years because of the antics of the liebour government and their union backers.
A Bond route is probably the only thing that will save us.
September 17, 2026
Good morning.
I know our kind host is a bit partisan, and I am no lover of the Labour Party and Socialism, but I do believe it is right that when recounting history that, the truth, the WHOLE truth, and noting but the truth be told. Not saying our kind host is not telling the truth, he is, but is it the WHOLE truth ?
I too am of an age where I can remember the blackouts and the piling up of rubbish. I also remember that, it was not just the Labour government that was responsible for our decline. Today I see much the same and, from that I can only conclude that the solution is to look to those who may have the answers to to the problems ‘others’ have placed us in.
I, unlike our latest PM, have learnt from history. And the course this nation is taking is just another swing of the pendulum which, once again, will swing back even harder than before.
There is hope. Just look at the people of Paddington.
Reply I criticised both the Labour and Heath government!
September 17, 2026
I was in a sink school when Labour had to go to the IMF with a begging bowl.
A few weeks earlier some of the girls had written to the Chancellor as part of a school project. They got a long hand written reply from the man himself. In some ways sweet and admirable, in other ways showing a complete lack of prioritisation, and dealing with trivia while messing up the important stuff.
still at least in those days first class letters were reliably delivered the next day, something we can only dream of now.
September 17, 2026
To reply:- Heath all Labour Governments and indeed most of the Tory ones other than the only partial exception of Thatcher have been dire but the Labour ones have been even worse.
JR points out the moronic 98% income tax rates from Double First in Greats and IMF Denis Healey. Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals and morons can believe in them – like socialism. But Osborne attacked Landlords with over 100% taxes by disallowing interest deductions so taxing them on “income” they had not made. He did this by dishonestly claiming they were getting a tax break relative to owner occupiers. They also pay CGT on non real gains also an over 100% tax.
A proper Conservative government would have undone almost everything done by Heath, Wilson, Blair, Brown especially the dire equalities act, but they just built on all this socialism and EU endless further integrations. Churchill should have undone all the Attlee disasters. Cameron the Blair Brown disasters but nothing was done by this Climate Alarmist, Pro EU abandon ship, big state socialist.
September 17, 2026
I lived and worked hard through the 60s & 70s and if these muppets on both sides of the house think it was wonderland then think again, the only good thing that happened in the 70s is for then the end of the Liebour party, So all these miss guided brainwashed idiots who keep voting Liebour then think twice before you put these buffoons back into power at the next general election which cannot come soon enough because they don’t give a toss about the normal working people just themselves
September 17, 2026
Yes remember the 1970’s very well as I had by then finished my 5 year indentured apprenticeship, was saving up to get married and purchase our first house.
Inflation was rampant at about 25% and wages almost increased as much, House prices doubled in the 18 months between 1971 -1973, so many moved out of London to be able to afford a home in less expensive areas.
Could not afford children so did not have any until we could !
Made redundant twice in the 1960’s and 70’s as companies were encouraged to move to other areas with huge Government grants, South Wales being a popular move at the time.
By the age of 38 had been made redundant 4 times with Company closures and moves, but it did not stop me from searching and working.
Have seen first hand what Government manipulation of industry has done with grants and subsidies, it rarely works, and more often than not it fails rapidly.
Sadly Mr Burnham and his youthful advisors and supporters do not have a clue about commerce, finance, history, taxation, or human nature, so the failures and errors of the past, will be repeated once again.
September 17, 2026
JR frequently writes revisionist histories, blaming everyone except the guilty for the economic problems of the Thatcher/Major era. The main reason was the oil price shock in 1974 when the price per barrel quadrupled, jumping from roughly $3 to nearly $12 a brrel
1975 had the highest inflation for 60 years at 24%. In 1976 the Labour government intervened and brought it down to 17%; but in 1977 it was still 16%. In 1978 it came down to single digits after temporary wage control agreements with the TUC
The unions, unhappy that their members were unable to put a loaf of bread on the table (the price of bread shot up 200% in 1980) or to send their kids to school wearing a pair of shoes, became much more militant. Millions of working hours were lost due to strikes.
Enter Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Within two years of the Iron Lady entering Downing Street, unemployment reached 3 million for the first time since the 1930’s.
The history books blame all this on the 1970’s oil price shock. However, Thatcher and her first Chancellor Geoffrey Howe were responsible for the unpopular and highly controversial tight monetary policies of the early 1980s. He drastically shifted the UK from direct taxation to indirect taxation (famously doubling VAT in his first budget) and pushed interest rates up sharply to break the double-digit inflation cycle, steering inflation down to 4.6% by 1982
Something similar is coming this winter. A litre of diesel near me was £2.01 yesterday. When the global oil stockpiles run out shortly, it might rise to as much as £4.50 a litre. Baddenoch and Farage will blame it all on Net Zero to deflect blame from their Big Oil donors, who will make record profits while the rest of us freeze this winter.