Like Thatcher, Truss wants radical change – but could she avoid a crisis?

Liz Truss is swimming against the tide if she thinks people would prefer cuts in taxation rather than money off their energy bills. Photograph: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

In Britain, the year 1976 was marked by three big events – a summer heatwave, a change of prime minister and a sterling crisis. In 2022, we have had the first and will soon get the second. Few would be entirely surprised if the third arrived by the end of the year.

As has been the case this year, in the summer of 1976 people enjoyed the sunshine and seemed not to care much about high inflation. According to a 2004 report from the New Economics Foundation thinktank, the UK has never been happier than it was in the year when Denis Howell was made the drought minister, Concorde made its first commercial flight and the Sex Pistols released Anarchy in the UK.