A Labour Government in deep trouble, losing mid-term elections; threats of public-sector strikes over pay; sharply rising oil prices; increasing inflation; arguments over Scottish devolution; even rows over abortion. Sounds familiar? Are we going through a rerun of the late 1970s, when Labour’s decline and fall led to Margaret Thatcher’s victory in May 1979?

To those who lived through the dismal decade of the 1970s, it feels different now. Thirty years ago the irresponsibility of some trade unions fatally undermined the attempt to control inflation through prices and incomes policies.

Now, the unions may be trying to use their leverage over a weakened Government and a virtually bankrupt Labour Party, but they are nothing like the force they were. In 1974, nearly half the labour force belonged to a union but this has dropped to little more than a quarter for much of this decade. Fewer than one in five private-sector employees are now union members, while three in five in the public sector still are.

Even the power of public-sector unions has been reduced, thanks to the laws passed in the Thatcher era requiring ballots before strikes, and banning closed shops and secondary action. While the deal between the Government, the TUC and the CBI over agency and temporary workers has worried some business groups, it is still a long way from the 1970s.

The number of working days lost through strikes was never less than six million in the 1970s, with a peak of 29.5 million in 1979 after the Winter of Discontent. In this decade, the average lost has been 660,000, of which less than 3 per cent have been in manufacturing.

The rise in fuel, food and other commodity prices is very destabilising, but the relative impact of higher oil prices is much less than in the 1970s because of much greater fuel efficiency. Consumer price inflation is now well above target at 3 per cent, with retail price inflation at 4.2 per cent. By contrast, retail prices growth touched a six-year low of 7.7 per cent in the spring of 1978, and was not as low again until late 1982. For most of the period, the rate was well into double figures.

There is now a sense of economic uncertainty rather than of impending, or actual, crisis in the foreign exchange and financial markets, which was the case for much of the 1970s.

Even in political terms, the Brown administration is in a secure parliamentary position on almost all issues. It has a larger Commons majority than any ruling party between 1970 and 1983. In 1978 the Callaghan Government was in a minority and dependent on the Lib-Lab pact. It was brought down in March 1979 on a Commons vote of no confidence when it lost the support of the smaller parties.

Yet Callaghan’s personal authority was always high, and well ahead of Mrs Thatcher’s even in 1979 as Labour lost office. Gordon Brown’s problem is in many ways worse: a loss of political authority, among voters in general and Labour activists and MPs. The question is not, as in the late 1970s, the survival of the Labour Government, but it is about the future of the Prime Minister himself.

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