Around the time she came to power, one of Margaret Thatcher’s close aides described her to me as “the reality principle in skirts.” It is an image that evokes a different age. In 1979, there were no computers in Downing Street. Telephone calls were routed through a switchboard, and no one could make a call from his desk. Rolls Royce and Jaguar were state-owned companies; electricity, gas, and water were public utilities; government had a majority stake in British Petroleum; British Airways was a nationalized industry. But by the time Thatcher was ousted in an inner-party coup in 1990, all those enterprises and more were in private hands.
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