It feels like 1976. And that long, hot summer didn't end well | Andy Beckett

The sense of ease in Britain over those months was not a total delusion. Yet the year brought huge political upheavalJust like this year's, the heatwave in 1976 arrived as Britain seemed to be approaching an economic and political abyss. During the spring and early summer, as the sun began to hammer down and the usual rain failed to fall, and the reservoirs began to shrink, the pound was lurching downwards on the markets. For almost three years, under Tory and Labour governments, the economy had been shrivelling alarmingly. Just as since the Brexit vote, a conviction had been building like a thundercloud among financial traders and business leaders, economists and commentators, in Britain and beyond, that the country was about to slip to a lower, less elite level, and stay there. "Goodbye, Great Britain," said a much-read editorial in the Wall Street Journal in 1975, "it was nice knowing you." Related: Why is Europe going through a heatwave? Continue reading...