Few suspected at the time that the 1979 election was also a 1979 moment. Sure, the gravediggers were on strike and James Callaghan spoke of a "sea-change in politics" about which there was little anyone could do. But the Conservative manifesto of that year was far from unadulterated Thatcherism. Not least because the party's leader was yet to become a Thatcherite herself.
"I think she became a Thatcherite in, well, about 1987, 1988," says Ken Clarke with a grin as wide as Britain's 2010 fiscal deficit. "When people persuaded her there was something called Thatcherism to which she was the leader."
