ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the background to two elements highlighted above, that is, the rise of the consensus around planning and the ability of the system to absorb change largely as a result of flexibility and adaptability necessary to accommodate such a breadth and scope for planning. The system was founded on the ability to reconcile the irreconcilable. He sets out where that adaptability emerged from, how the consensus was achieved and why, ultimately, it broke down. The shift to an era of instability and change was the free rein given to experimentation with neoliberal ideas and policies in the hope of their becoming established as the new orthodoxy for planning. During the post-war era there had been a cross-party consensus on planning. This consensus began to break down in the 1970s, which led to the ideological attack by the New Right during the 1980s.
