sentences:  Nigel Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, identified inflation as "the judge and jury of a government's record", but while the country also improved its OECD inflation ranking from fifteenth in 1979 to tenth in the Lawson Boom year of 1987, when inflation had fallen to 4.2%, in the decade as a whole the country still had the second highest inflation rate of the G7 countries.Unemployment had peaked at nearly 3,300,000 in 1984, but had fallen below 3,000,000 by June 1987, in early 1989 it fell below 2,000,000 and by December 1989 it stood at just over 1,600,000.The United Kingdom's growth rate was more impressive, ranking first in the OECD-16 in 1987, a statistical achievement that Thatcher and her government exploited to the full in the general election campaign of that year.