Welcome to another edition of "Michael explains historical economics". Dear god...
"Popularity isn't everything. In fact, it isn't the most important thing. What matters is doing what you believe to be right, and that's what I've always tried to do, and I shall go on doing."
Ted Heath, Panorama 16 October 1967
"Ted Heath had some of the best ideas of a post-war Prime Minister. He was quite a radical person."
David Owen, to Peter Hennessy, Hennessy, Peter. The Prime Minister: The Office and Its Holders Since 1945. United Kingdom: St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2001.
Have you ever known a Prime Minister who is bloody hard to rank? The man who brought the UK into the EU, yet also the man who, when the Sunningdale Agreement failed, brought internment to Northern Ireland. The man who orchestrated an arms embargo on all combatants in the Yom Kippur War, yet officially acknowledged Pinochet. The man who brought in the eligibility for free school meals yet ended free school milk in the same instance. He increased welfare spending, pensions and index linked benefits to inflation, yet imprisoned striking dockworkers.
