One day way back in January 1985, the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher was pictured leaving Downing Street with a rolled up copy of that day’s Evening Standard under her arm. The clearly visible headline, was “The pound perks up.”

It needed to. Earlier that day sterling had sunk to $1.03 (yes, one dollar and thee cents) in what is still its all-time low against the US currency.

The headline celebrated a well-timed and co-ordinated intervention from the Bank of England and other central banks which routed the speculators and bounced it back up to $1.10. That day marked the turning point and from there it slowly recovered in succeeding weeks to settle at a little over $1.20.

The fall was the more dramatic because, just four years earlier, sterling had soared above $2.40 in celebration of the UK’s then new status as an oil producing nation.

And the picture was staged for PR purposes: Thatcher wanted to show that she understood the value of the currency mattered and that it was a reflection of what the international community thought of Britain’s economic prospects and the ability of her government to deal with the challenges it faced.

The picture was not borne of a desire to promote this paper, though we did use it for years afterwards in advertisements. Rather it was to signal to the world that the halving of the currency in four years was not a good thing and she was on the case.

People today seem to have forgotten that Britain’s economic record since the Second World War has been a succession of sterling crises forcing governments into humiliating U-turns.

As well as this incident in the Eighties, there were the spectacular devaluations of 1948 and 1967 and our forced ejection from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.

Most humiliatingly, there was 1976 when a collapse of confidence in the financial markets meant the government could no longer sell gilts and was forced instead to borrow the money it needed from the International Monetary Fund.

A condition of the loan was that it put in place fundamentally different economic policies dictated to it by IMF officials.

The fear of this happening meant that respect for the Bank of England was hardwired into politicians.

They might not always like the governor — who does like being lectured and told to be less profligate by a well-heeled bank manager? — but any thoughts they had they kept private, and arguments were kept behind closed doors.

Every politician understood that there would be a heavy price to pay if divisions ever appeared in public because it would instantly make it harder for government to borrow the money it needed.

Politicians knew too that if the markets sensed that the Bank of England and government were not singing from the same hymn sheet, not only would they become reluctant to lend, but they would assume it was the Bank, not the government, which was right.

Today all this seems to have been forgotten. The Prime Minister herself — no doubt guided by advisers whose understanding of the world is based on past experience in the Home Office — used her platform at the Conservative Party Conference to deliver a populist attack on the policies of the Bank.

This was followed by Michael Gove — this generation’s nearest thing to Norman Tebbit — who made the attack personal against Mark Carney.

Then came William Hague, whose criticisms were the more telling because he ranks higher than Gove — or another critic Jacob Rees-Mogg — in the credibility rankings and is said to be close to the Prime Minister.

Even The Spectator, the house journal of Brexiteers (Matthew Parris’s articles notwithstanding), has just published an article saying Carney must go.

His de-fenestration is justified, it said, because he has made a series of forecasts which turned out to be wrong — a criterion which, if applied to journalists, would put us all out of work.

Now it is one thing to have doubts about the present direction of monetary policy but it is quite another to blame the Bank for being the Bank and Carney, personally, for implementing the policies which follow from its mandate.

It is stupid to call the bank manager a fool in the same breath as you ask him for money. It indicates a serious level of ignorance and lack of judgement at the top of the Government, neither of which is comforting.

What should really frighten the advisers surrounding Theresa May is that, of all the past crises, it is 1976 which most resonates, because the five key ingredients then echo strongly with today.

First, in both cases there was a major deficit in the balance of payments with the country exporting too little and importing too much.

Second, both governments had a programme they were determined to put in place, regardless of warnings from all sides that it risked making the nation poorer and doing serious long-term damage.

Third, both governments did not see the consequent slide in sterling as a warning sign that markets were getting nervous but seemed instead to welcome it as an easy way to make Britain’s exports more competitive.

Fourth, both governments were spending massively more than they raised in taxes. And finally, in both cases the Government was supported by backbench MPs who seemed completely disconnected from the realities of life outside the Westminster bubble and totally unaware that people from around the world were watching their behaviour with mounting incredulity.

The only difference, in fact, is that last time it was the Labour party in the driving seat. This time it is the Conservatives.