First Thatcher ministry May 1979. The Winter of Discontent had seen the Labour government's popularity slump during the previous four months, and the opinion polls all pointed towards a Conservative victory. The Tories won the election with a majority of 44 seats and their leader Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister. Thatcher inherited some of the worst economic statistics of postwar Britain. The nation was still feeling the effects of the numerous strikes during the recent Winter of Discontent. Inflation had recently topped 20%, and unemployment was in excess of 1.5 million for the first time since the 1930s. Thatcher's monetarist
Margaret Thatcher past 70 years. Despite a relatively poor average poll rating as Prime Minister, Thatcher has since ranked highly in retrospective opinion polling and, according to YouGov, she is "see[n] in overall positive terms" by the British public. She was voted the fourth-greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by MORI. According to theatre critic Michael Billington, Thatcher left an "emphatic mark" on the arts while Prime Minister. One of the earliest satires of Thatcher as Prime Minister involved satirist John Wells (as writer and performer), actress Janet Brown (voicing Thatcher) and future