I've was looking through The Economist's online archive earlier when I stumbled upon quite an interesting and ironic article shortly before the 1979 election predicting the future of the British politics if Thatcher were elected (April 28th 1979, 'Only one Prime Minister'). Here are some highlights which capture the pessimism of the era:
'Mrs Thatcher seems to have (God help us) little historical vision about the fickleness of British opinion when the going gets rough, only a rudimentary vision of how trade-union power might really be harnessed or curtailed, no vision at all about how to prevent her convictions (and her legislation based on them) being mauled in 1984 or 1989. She is, as we said nearly two years before the prime minister came up with it this week, no Disraeli: to know her even a little is to find it hard to imagine her having the sympathy to write romantic novels about the Chartists.'
'We predict that, if Mrs Thatcher wins office next week, she will live to see most of the things she stands for and achieves assaulted by an alternative government equipped with all the same levers of minority power that she pulled when she had her turn. The cycle of recession and no-growth in which Britain is locked makes the five-year electoral cycle of unpopularity a hard one to escape.'
'Either, about three years into Mrs Thatcher's government, the Liberals will start winning their usual mid-term round of Tory Orpingtons. A frighteningly left-wing-seeming Labour party will at that moment start looking poised again to take power in the next parliament. In which case...Mrs Thatcher may inaugurate a reformed electoral system which reflects the real common sense of the British people. Only that would guarantee her government's work not being overturned at the next general election.'
'The next Labour government...will be a very much worse one than Mr. Callaghan has led...Mr. Denis Healey would be unlikely to be able to hold a Labour party in opposition for long...The party's finances and votes depend directly on the trade unions...The best negative reason for voting against Margaret Thatcher is therefore that Britain's moderates...could find life quite impossible...It has been one of Mr Callaghan's uncelebrated successes to create an apparent firmness from Downing Street that has helped nurture the first stirrings of renascent moderation in Britain's trade unions. If Mrs Thatcher wins, both he and that will be discredited.'