GB had an economy on par to the rest of Europe, it was still one of the richest 8 in the world, every nation was being hit by the fuel crisis. We had high inflation, lower than EC average unemploymnet and low investmnet.
The Unions didn't run the show, as a democracy we had frequent elections...
We aided the Russians to defeat the germans. Simple. No comparison to Thatcher's defending of right wing anti-democracy dictators as per Pinochet, Nicuragua, South Africa, Namibia, Angola etc