During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or another, from mainland Europe and the solution from outside it.

When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality - other than equality before the law - that government poses a threat to liberty.

Any leader has to have a certain amount of steel in them, so I am not that put out being called the Iron Lady.

I've learned one thing in politics. You don't take a decision until you have to.

Yet the basic fact remains: every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost. That is why, like marriage (in the Prayer Book's words), regulation should not "be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly"

There's no such thing as society.

I want to get totally rid of class distinction. As someone put it one of the papers this morning: Marks and Spencer have triumphed over Karl Marx and Engels.