Margret Thatcher transformed much in our national life. Now taken as the totemic figure of Tory Euroscpeticism, her attitudes to Europe were perhaps less fixed, and more interesting.
Thatcher often portrayed herself as an ideological politician, and her supports followed suit. Of course, she was just that. Certainly, it would impossible to understand Thatcherism without some understanding of monetarism and free markets, for example. To see Thatcher and Thatcherism in purely ideological terms would be to misread her, and misread her career.
In the first place it makes what appear like her inconsistencies as hard to account for. To square the Heathite milk-snatcher and slayer of grammar schools with the later Thatcher has always required explanation. In part, it is argued, she was on the ideological and political path that would lead her to monetarism, free markets and the radical Conservatism of the likes of Sir Keith Joseph or even Enoch…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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