Napoleon claimed that what he wanted of his generals, above all, was that they should be ‘lucky’.

Luck plays an important part in success.

Mrs Thatcher was lucky.

Lucky that in the early eighties, when she was at her most vulnerable, her opponents – the Labour Party – effectively walked off the field fighting among themselves.

Lucky that, in consequence, she faced a divided opposition, split between Labour and the Liberals/SDP, so that she could cruise to victory in 1983 and 1987.

Lucky that the Falklands War was won, when it could have gone badly wrong.

Lucky that in miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill, there was a man so blinded by his own ego that he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, and allowed her to dismember Britain’s coal industry.

But she made a lot of her luck.

She was more determined and clear-sighted than those around her, and for a decade therefore led the country into new and untried territory.

At the same time she was a divisive figure and some of her policies undoubtedly caused quite gratuitous damage. It took years, for instance, for East Lancashire to recover from the early eighties’ recession caused by the lethal combination of sky-high interest rates (17%), and an over-valued pound, which knocked out thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Despite her ‘law and order’ rhetoric she presided over a record rise in crime, disorder, and social dislocation.

It was under her that whole families lost their jobs, and joined an ‘underclass’ from which escape has proved difficult. Health and education services did not get the investment they needed. And, without question, she widened the ‘north/south’ divide in both economic and political terms. For all this, do I, as someone who sat in opposition to her throughout her Premiership, believe that she deserves the warm world-wide tributes; that she was one of the great twentieth century Prime Ministers?

Yes I do. She made Britain a very different place and helped change its politics. Britain is now a much more confident place than it was in the seventies and that cannot be taken away from her.