Photo by Pete Primarello/Evening Standard/Getty Images The Chancellor is grappling with the ramifications of a war in the Middle East which has created an inflationary spike and fuel shortages. The political class are anxiously watching economic graphs. There are three words that keep popping up in Whitehall, parliament and the newspapers. Not “cost of living”. The three words are “balance of payments”. The year, you can already guess, is 1976. The embattled Chancellor is not Rachel Reeves, but Denis Healey. A cap, a hand, and the rest is history. The Sterling Crisis and IMF Loan of 1976 are perhaps the most misunderstood economic events in recent British history. Columnists and politicians love to reference them, particularly in reference to the current Iran crisis and our own beleaguered Labour government. But they barely understand the events they’re describing. The point is not that our current crisis is the same as then, despite some passing similarities.…