14 June 2025, 19:09 | Updated: 16 June 2025, 08:51

By Iain Dale

Most people who lived through the Thatcher years are incapable of a dispassionate assessment of her record.

Even many, if not most, political academics and historians, who are trained to know better find the task almost impossible.

There is, however, a general consensus that the two greatest peacetime prime ministers of the twentieth century were Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.

They were both political changemakers, and both stamped their mark on the country in no uncertain terms.

What they had in commons was that each knew their own mind. They had a clear sense of what the country’s problems were and gave their governments a clear sense of direction.

They were both, as Tony Benn, would have put it, signposts rather than weathervanes.

Compare them with most modern day politicians and today’s examples are found wanting.

Keir Starmer is perhaps the most perfect........

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