An ailing Baroness Thatcher will not actively intervene in a Cameron premiership (her days as a “backseat driver” of Tory policy in government are long behind her), but it will be hard for the Conservative leader to exorcise her spirit. The question that many Tories are asking is whether Cameron is a Heath or a Thatcher – is he a trimmer or a visionary? For all that Cameron claims to be a progressive, he is a self-confessed “big Thatcher fan”. He has consciously echoed her claim that society is not the same as the state, and insists, as she did, that government intervention offers diminishing returns. The guardians of her legacy will make sure that he means it.
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