Black Wednesday - 16 September 1992 

He did say that he wouldn't raise taxes as well in the 1992 election but then oversaw the biggest peacetime tax increases in 1993 which included VAT on gas and electricity

I heard a story from a woman who worked in DS at the time saying that major and lamont had a heated argument about whether to raise taxes since major wanted to keep at least some of his election promises, but lamont managed to convince major to allow him to raise taxes. this was always the problem with major, there was never any decisiveness or authoritativeness in that man at all.

An awful lot of people saw their businesses,livelihoods and homes go up in smoke during that madness persisting with trying to keep the pound in the ERM. Sanity prevailed when they abandoned the folly and let it float.

4 million unemployed at the worst point in late 1992 and still some a-holes persisted in trying to demonise the victims. However,they were steadily alienating more and more of their erstwhile supporters among the electorate.

Who? Cameron?

@@aaanawaleh That's him

Hmmm. Think Anthony Eden and Theresa May may be even worse,but I take your point.

So far*

@@FlabbyTitmuss wanna add anyone to that list? XD

Cameron, who promised he would stay as PM if Brexit was voted for on the referendum, but resigned immediately the morning after, seems like a much weaker PM to me. Major stayed on and his next 5 years after Black Wednesday were full of scandals, but the economy wasn't doing so bad really.

what about those to vote labour or lib dem? are they any better?

yes they are worse now becasue of decreased purchasing power

That was a Sunday,as it happens. Wasn't the Stock Exchange shut then? I went to a bring-a-bottle party at the house of a woman I knew that Saturday night,and ended up sleeping it off in her spare bedroom.

Two-and-a-half years after Black Wednesday most people were stuck in a wretched drudge of long hours for depressed wages,with a lack of job security,while the government insisted on a race for the bottom in terms of workers' rights and conditions,from which ceertain rich and greedy friends of theirs profited. Inflation and public debts was brought down to their lowest level in decades,but unemployment while decreasing gradually remained stubbornly high. Though the number was growing slowly,far too few people were sharing in the prosperity brought to some by the recovery to save the Tories at the polls in the 1997 election,when they were dumped resoundingly by Blair's first landslide victory. Unemployment fell rapidly under New Labour until,in about 2006,it reached its lowest level since 1975. However,a debt bubble had formed by about then at all levels - government,corporate,consumer - that would attain unsustainble problems and lead to deep trouble once it burst.

Brown ran a prudent ship for his first few years at number 11,becoming known as the Iron Chancellor,and the finances were in as good a place as they'd been for several decades. Unfortunately,he seemed to lose his grip on it later and by 2006 excessive borrowing during a boom left little to fall back on when,inevitably though many seemed to think it wouldn't,the clock struck midnight,the party stopped and the bust came along.

Major was her Chancellor of the Exchequer in the last bit of the 80s. He warned of the bear market troubles to come in his autumn budget statement in 1989,though it wasn't for almost a year and a half that after that that Britain tipped into recession. House prices peaked midway through 1990 and then started to fall,but the Stamp Duty holiday that was cynically introduced,encouraging people to take on far too much risk to pile in on the act before the holiday ended,must have had a lot to do with that.