From Thatcher to Trump and Brexit: my seven lessons learned after 28 years as Guardian economics editor

The free market experiment has failed, free trade is out, and populism is rife but it can be defeated if the left can galvanise ideas into a credible plan

Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and Nigel Lawson her chancellor of the exchequer. Neil Kinnock was leader of the Labour party. The iron curtain separated Europe.

Across the Atlantic, Ronald Reagan’s second term in the White House was drawing to a close. Donald Trump floated the idea that George Bush might want him as his running mate in the looming US presidential election, an overture Bush described as “strange and unbelievable”.

Trump won because he promised to give voters what they wanted rather than what America’s liberal elite thought they ought to want.

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