It is almost impossible to compare a mere Leader of the Opposition to our greatest peacetime Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. But three points should be borne in mind. The first is that back in 1979, no one was predicting that Mrs Thatcher would become a world-famous figure. She was governing a troubled nation with a divided Cabinet. Although she heaped scorn on the defeatist sophisticates who thought that the best any government could achieve was the orderly management of decline, would scorn be enough? The idea that this woman would help to win the Cold War while bringing the unions within the rule of law and the nationalised industries within the laws of economics, as well as cutting income tax to 1930s levels; in 1979, that would not have sounded like prophecy. It would have sounded like heresy.
Second, Margaret Thatcher was a Fabian. As a governing doctrine, Thatcherism was gradualist.
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