What if Thatcher won the 1990 leadership challenge?

Thirty years ago today, Margaret Thatcher was in 10 Downing Street. For almost eleven and a half years, it had been her home and her headquarters. There, she had planned the campaigns which transformed her country, and earned her the right to be ranked with Churchill. He, the greatest war leader: she, the greatest domestic one. But on 23 November 1990, everything was different. The previous day, she had resigned the Leadership of her party. Although she would still be Prime Minister for a few days, until the Tories had chosen a replacement, her principal task in that vestigial interlude was to pack up her possessions and prepare to move out. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Wolsey, it was: ‘A short farewell to all her greatness.’

Although the story of her departure has often been told elsewhere, there is a parallel with Churchill. In 1945, a large majority of his fellow-countrymen believed that he was the greatest living Englishman: possibly the greatest of all time.