I suppose I was about 20, and a crowd of us had been to a village hop and came back to make midnight cups of coffee. I was in the kitchen helping to dish up and having a fierce argument with one of the boys in the crowd when someone else interrupted to say: 'Of course Margaret, you will go into politics won't you?' I stopped dead. Suddenly it was crystalised for me. I knew.

A leader is someone who knows what they want to achieve and can communicate that.

People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture.

Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about. ... In short, the state [is] everything and the individual nothing.

Consensus negates leadership.

If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.

If a Tory does not believe that private property is one of the main bulwarks of individual freedom, then he had better become a socialist and have done with it.