A date that is sure to make Al and a few others cringe...
Cringe is the wrong word... but do note that anything that I say about this period might be a little biased. Just a warning.
Depends what you mean by a "sea change" doesn't it? Personally I'm not a believer in the existence of a
genuine Post-War consensus so...
But the rise of a harder Right (if that's the best way to put it) within the Tory party was, or so thinketh I, inevitable due to demographic changes (related to Post-War affluence), while there was certainly a sea change within economic policy in the late '70's, but o/c that had happend under
Labour.
So yes and no
It wasn't really either; it was mainly a backlash against the public sector unions. It certainly wasn't a mandate for the economic policies of the early '80's (which were responsible for a sudden collapse in manufacturing employment) that's for sure. O/c Thatcherism as we know it (or not) today wasn't really born until well into the early '80's.
I don't think so. But then I wouldn't, would I?
But Labour in 1979 was a different thing to Labour in 1980...
The narrow "defeat" of the second and the rout of the third are one reason for the election being held so soon after the Winter of Discontent.