Britain changed more in the 1980s than in almost any recent decade. The rise of the City and the fall of the unions, the wider retreat of the left and the return of military confidence, the energy of a renewed entrepreneurialism and the entropy of a new, entrenched unemployment – more than twice as high even in the mid-80s boom as when Margaret Thatcher took office in 1979 – all make the decade feel like the hinge of our modern history. Graham Stewart argues this emphatically in his conclusion. He compares his chosen period with that traditional whipping boy of 80s chroniclers, the 1970s, "a decade of strife", which "unfolded without actually settling any of [Britain's] persistent problems". "By contrast," he continues, "a Briton gifted with the ability to switch seamlessly from the news of 1979 to that of 1990 would have been astonished to find that … many of the daily staples of the 70s were either no longer major concerns by 1990 or … were analysed and debated through the prism of almost completely different assumptions."
