Peter Shore on Margaret Thatcher

“Mrs Thatcher is beginning to reflect a genuine English nationalist feeling, a deep feeling about the English and how they see themselves in terms of their own history.”

“She is undoubtedly a most formidable communicator. She has the ability to take hold of complex issues and, if you like, simplify them, moralise them, according to her own bourgeois values, and to get them across. She's used it at every platform I've seen her on, from the House of Commons to a party conference, and above all on television and radio. Secondly, I think that she's sensed some of the kinds of moral considerations in politics that underlie people's political and economic attitudes, and I think she has articulated right-wing moral convictions in a more formidable and more committed way than any leader of the right in post-war Britain.”