Dominic Zabrick

Hi everybody, it's Dominic Zabrick here from The Rest Is History.

Now some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest Is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter.

And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest Is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own.

So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks...

generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy.

When Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise, people are arguing about Europe.

The government has got a few issues with the trade unions.

And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say, governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues.

And people are asking if Britain is governable at all.

So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain,

and the Britain of the mid-1970s.

So in this series that's coming out on The Rest Is History, we'll be looking at these and other issues.

We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her.

We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about.

We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout.

Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you?

Of course it sounds good to you.

we have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode.

And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest Is History wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, it's Dominic here from The Rest Is History, and here is that clip that I mentioned earlier.