Dawn is breaking in Puerto Argentino, the town its former inhabitants once knew as Port Stanley. At the tiny airport, a gigantic mural commemorates the soldiers from the mainland who lost their lives in the battle for the Malvinas, or the Falklands, as they used to be called.
Next to the old Anglican cathedral (now Catholic), a gigantic blue and white flag flutters. In the square nearby, a statue of General Leopoldo Galtieri gazes impassively out to sea.

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Instead, they lurched to the Left and elected as their new Prime Minister Michael Foot, with his flowing white locks, walking stick and impassioned socialist rhetoric. The real power in the land, however, was Foot’s colleague Tony Benn, who replaced the disgruntled Healey as Chancellor. And in the next few years, it was Benn who presided over the most sweeping socialist measures any Western country had seen in living memory.

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But Benn was adamant. ‘You turn if you want to,’ he told his party conference in 1980. ‘Labour’s not for turning.’

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A year earlier, Foot had been derided for wearing a green coat described by some as a donkey jacket. Now Benn turned up in a genuine black woollen donkey jacket, complete with numerous badges: CND, ‘Right to Work’, ‘Ireland for the Irish’ and a tiny Red flag.

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However, by now it was too late. As a result of the recession and the inefficiencies of the dominant printing unions, most newspapers had closed. The Times had ceased publication in 1981, when the Government vetoed Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to rescue it from bankruptcy.
Those papers that survived, including the Daily Mail, were forced to operate under the strict supervision of the new Minister of Communications, former Oscar-winning actress Glenda Jackson.

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Some historians claim that if Callaghan had put off the election until 1979, as some of his ministers were urging, then Margaret Thatcher might have won and become prime minister. And then 21st century Britain would be completely different.
But I’m not so sure. As our school curriculum — written by Tony Blair, Mr Benn’s hand-picked successor — is so keen on reminding us, individuals never matter in history.
The tides of history were surely inevitable. And in any case, who ever heard of a woman Prime Minister?