Touche!
In reality though, I do feel there were both succeses and failures under Thatcher. I feel she was the polar opposite of Atlee in almost every respect. I mean how many people in Britain will inspire both mourning and street parties when they die, many years after they leave office?
Link to UK Parliament publication on inflation.
Inflation rose in 74 due to the Arab-Israeli war, the miners strike and various other issues. Up until then, it was in single digits. If you check, until then from the end of the war, it was in single digits. It rose throughout the seventies, but it rose throughout the world in this period.
Britains economy grew, the decline I feel was one from Empire and becoming dwarfed by the US and overtaken by the continental economies who grew faster.
That is because you view negotiations between the unions and the government as us vs them, which would almost guarantee strife. The biggest missed opurtunity in the post-war period was Harold Wilson not putting In place of strife forward.
Had he succeeded then the British economy wouldn't have suffered as much in the late seventies, and continued growth to today. Britain would be a true Social Democracy.
I absolutely agree about the us versus them mentality of Thatcherism. In fact it shares this with the Labour Left and the militant trade unions. I personally, regardless of their ideological viewpoints, view most political parties as having similar personalities (both in Australia where I live and in the UK).
For instance the Labour Left and 'conservative' Tories for all their ideological differences, are vary similar in their 'political personality' for instance. Always looking for divisions in society, 'the evil multinationals', 'the evil trade unions' for instance, as well as exploiting new divisons, both real and imaged.
On the other hand the Labour Right and 'wet' Tories, instead look for what united people rather than what divides them. They seek to find 'win-win' situations to political problems. I am currently a supporter of New Labour/Third Way ideas and similarly in the past when they were more influential, I would have had quite a deal of agreement with 'wet' Tory ideas.