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Today, in common with millions of other people, I will be watching the funeral of Baroness Thatcher. I will be celebrating the life of a remarkable politician whose many achievements included: overseeing the privatisation of loss-making State-run industries; establishing crucial friendships with Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, which facilitated the fall of the Iron Curtain; introducing ‘right-to-buy’ for council tenants and encouraging aspiration into a society which, for decades, had been led by ‘consensus’ politicians, culminating in Britain’s Winter of Discontent and being labelled the Sick Man of Europe; courageously dispatching a task force thousands of miles across the South Atlantic to reclaim islands that had been illegally invaded by a despotic military junta; and, last but not least, forcing the British Labour Party to reposition itself away from Socialism.

Margaret Thatcher was, in the eyes of the Soviets, an Iron Lady. To those of us who struggled to undertake our school homework by candlelight during the Three Day Week in 1974, her years in Downing Street symbolised the rebirth of a great nation. Thatcher was a great woman, a great leader and a great Briton.