In early August 1979, Peter Cropper, a special advisor to newly-installed chancellor of the exchequer, Geoffrey Howe, sent a memo to colleagues. They should, he warned them, "stop being so downbeat. The world economy may be gloomy but there's absolutely no need for us to be gloomy."
As Dominic Sandbrook writes in 'Who Dares Wins', a history of Britain from 1979 to 1982, when Cropper read the Treasury's summary of their economic strategy, he was shocked at its miserabilism.
