49 years ago today, sterling crashed to its lowest ever point against the dollar. Denis Healey stared down his socialist opponents and asked the IMF for a loan – paving the way for Margaret Thatcher’s election victory, writes Eliot Wilson

Denis Winston Healey, chancellor of the Exchequer (1974-79) and Labour’s indomitable intellectual brawler, soaked up pressure like few politicians could. At 26 he had been beach master for the 2nd Infantry Brigade during the Anzio landings, getting thousands of soldiers ashore in the middle of the night. He read Plato and Kant, but once warned a patronising admiral he would “chew his balls off”.

Even for Healey, though the last few days of September and the beginning of October 1976 would be challenging.

On 28 September, Healey was in the VIP lounge at Heathrow, preparing to fly to Hong Kong for a meeting of Commonwealth finance ministers, then to the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting, taking place in Manila. The British economy was mired in problems: inflation was 14.5 per cent (though down from a high of 23.7 per cent earlier in the year); the balance of payments deficit was ballooning at more than £2bn; and Britain’s foreign exchange reserves were at a record low of just over $5bn.

Most alarming was the collapsing value of sterling. At the........

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