Harold Macmillan improving standard of living; the slogan "Life's Better Under the Conservatives" was matched by Macmillan's own remark, "indeed let us be frank about it—most of our people have never had it so good," usually paraphrased as "You've never had it so good." Such rhetoric reflected a new reality of working-class affluence; it has been argued that "the key factor in the Conservative victory was that average real pay for industrial workers had risen since Churchill's 1951 victory by over 20 per cent". The scale of the victory meant that not only had the Conservatives won three successive general elections, but
Lie in Our Graves such as "What Would You Say", "Tripping Billies", and most famously, "Ants Marching". It has been introduced by Matthews in a wide variety of ways, running from the succinct (Matthews frequently will jibe, "This is a song about being dead") to the introspective. During a performance from Marcus Amphitheater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 23, 1996, Matthews had this to say about it: ""This is a song that sings about the hopes that when we all get to the end of our lives, that we'll feel pretty good about what we did, so don't compromise yourself."" The song was originally