Despite this apparent dismantling of the public sector, the share of Britain’s GDP absorbed by public expenditure remained virtually the same in 1988 (41.7 percent) as it had ten years earlier (42.5 percent), notwithstanding Thatcher’s promises to ‘get the state off people’s backs’. This was because the Conservative government had to pay unprecedented sums in unemployment benefit. The ‘scandalously’ high figure of 1.6 million jobless that had so damaged Callaghan’s government in 1977 had reached 3.25 million by 1985 and remained one of the highest in Europe for the rest of Mrs. Thatcher’s time
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