Indeed, in economic and social affairs, the electorate grew steadily less Thatcherite during her years in office. Her missionary zeal fell on deaf ears.

Nor has Thatcherite policy succeeded in one of its chief aims to reduce the share of government spending in national income. The most one can say is that it halted the rise for a time.

Most obviously in need of amendment is the view that minimally managed and regulated markets are both more stable and more dynamic than those subject to extensive government intervention. The Thatcherite assumption, in other words, was that government failure is far more menacing to prosperity than market failure.

The paradox is that, for a man who wielded so much power for so long, it is unclear what domestic legacy, if any, Blair will leave. Blairism was a mood, a style, but, in substantive terms, it represented no radical break with the Thatcherite legacy that New Labour repackaged so cleverly, and, in fairness, administered more humanely than the Iron Lady ever did.

This proposition overturned the previous Keynesian orthodoxy that macroeconomic policy should aim at full employment, with the control of inflation left to wage policy. Yet, despite all the supply side reforms introduced by Thatcherite governments, unemployment has been much higher since 1980 than in the 1950 s and 1960 s 7.4 on average in the United Kingdom, compared to 1.6 in the earlier decades.