"Mrs Thatcher fits the rule that there are no bad Prime Ministers. She may lack Heath's architectonic sense, but more than makes up for it in persuasiveness and electioneering flair. She lacks Callaghan's fatalism, most certainly, but not his caution. She has Eden's wish to meddle, but with the energy to support it. If in many ways she is under-read, her appetite for official papers exceeds that of almost all her predecessors. Had she lost the 1987 election, she would have looked like a curious aberration; since she won, she will be seen as marking a change of epochs, whatever her individual qualities. Whatever the future holds, she will go down as one of history's great improbabilities. For the present, it is perhaps safest to assert that she is the only Prime Minister to cook for her private secretaries when they are working late. She may have slain yesterday's dragon, not today's: her battle was with an archaic union-based socialism, not a pervasive middle-class liberalism. Still, the dragon looked anything but slayable in 1975, and the work had to be done, with but few helpers in her own party. She may outlive the context which made her relevant, but in the process bequeath a broad national governing party. The measure of her achievement is that she has made Thatcherism unnecessary."