A lot of political pundits credit Margaret Thatcher and her conservative party policies for turning around the UK’s economy starting in the 1980s. She definitely deserves some credit. What is often not mentioned is the discovery and production of the North Sea oil starting in the late 1970s.
The main reason for UK’s turnaround in the 1980s was the revenue generated from oil exports. The same story applies to the US and Ronald Reagan. Only in the US, it was the Prudhoe Bay oil in Alaska.
The UK is no longer an oil exporter today.