He's almost exactly my age and has a similar educational background (grammar school boy, scholarship to Oxford) except that his college, Worcester, was more trad and probably more conservative, and given that the Falklands War was absolutely polarising in our college it must have been God-awful in a college where the left-wing students were in much more of a minority. And then, of course, there was Section 28.

But someone can have good reasons for hating Thatcher and not assume that she's the ultimate fate of all successful female politicians.