1978 Prelude
By the time Margaret Thatcher had won the Conservative party leadership in 1975, she was already touting the free-market ideas of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman that would define her transformative economic policies. The City was broadly supportive — senior bankers at Barings and Cazenove backed her — if sceptical at first that she could succeed at getting her ideas through.

1979 Election
A swing of two million voters away from Labour hands the Conservatives a comfortable majority. Eleven days after the election, Thatcher announced the right to buy council housing, income tax cuts, the abolition of the commission setting prices, protections for workers who refuse to join unions and a privatisation programme that would eventually lead to the sale of British Telecom, Jaguar, British Airways and others.