ABSTRACT
These two books‡ might seem to have a great deal in common. Both deal with the five years of Labour government from 1974 to 1979 (although Britton covers the first eight years of Conservative government as well); the focus of both is on policy rather than events; and both aim to provide an assessment of policy in terms of its effectiveness and appropriateness. That is, they are more concerned to isolate the part played by government in the economic history of those years and draw morals from the record than to provide an account of events in which the actions of government are only part of the story. They accept that any assessment of policy has to be made in relation to feasible alternatives (‘counterfactuals’) and make use of mathematical models to demonstrate what success policies had.
