The same economic shocks of the 1970s that propelled the spectacular electoral victories of Socialist parties in Southern Europe led to a generalized shift to the Right among Northern European and American voters. The American Democratic Party suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of a resurgent Republican Party in 1980. Socialists were displaced by a coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals in Belgium in 1981 and in the Netherlands and Germany in 1982. In Scandinavia the traditional hegemony of social democracy in both ideas and votes started to unravel for the first time in decades. Yet the most severe defeat of the Left took place in Britain. In May 1979 the strongest turnaround of public opinion since 1945 returned the Conservative Party to office. Helped by an impressive lead over a split Labour Party, the Tory Party would enjoy a comfortable parliamentary majority for the following decade and a half.

The prolonged British Tory government makes it possible to examine the systematic implementation of a conservative economic strategy, providing therefore a pointed contrast with the Spanish Socialist experience. After a long period in search of “true Conservative solutions” (Behrens 1980) to the declining British economy, which included the failed reformist attempt under Heath in the early 1970s, by the late 1970s the Conservative leadership was definitely committed to effecting a clean break with the postwar consensus built around the active involvement of the state in the economy.