Dominic Zabrick

The other thing is something else she gets from Grantham, and that's the Methodism.

And actually, this to me, I think this is one of the absolute defining things of Thatcherism.

It's the tone, the moralistic...

evangelical tone yeah and the low church tone rather than the high church tone completely margaret as a girl had to say grace before every meal she had to go to chapel three or four times on sundays her father as a lay preacher went on and on and on about hard work individualism thrift clean living all of this

And this is what I think makes her politics different.

There is a moralism to it, a low church moralism that is totally unlike anything that any other Tory leader says before her.

So in 1984, an interview with The Times, I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil.

And I believe that in the end, good will triumph.

I mean, Ted Heath could have lived to the age of 10,000 and he would never have said anything like that.

It's unthinkable.

I mean, you see this reflected in her archives, which are online at the Thatcher Foundation website, which is brilliant, by the way, this amazing digital archive.

You can see all the notes that she would handwrite for her conference speeches, and they'd be full of all the stuff about the evils of socialism, good versus evil, what the great religions of the past teach us, what life is struggle.

Her speechwriters would cut all this.

They'd say, God, this is bonkers.

But it would find its way in one way or another.

And I think you're absolutely right.

She thinks socialism is not just wrong.

She thinks it's morally, it's evil.

It's corrupting.

People in 70s Britain, they're used to thinking socialists are well-meaning and idealistic.