Mrs Thatcher entered Downing Street on May 4 1979. At the time I was a 12-year-old schoolboy at a little prep school in London. One of the headmasters, a grotesquely pompous but immaculately clad gentleman - I knew he was a Leo before he told me - invited us to his study to watch TV and witness history being made. "Everything’s going to change now," said Mr ‘Leo’ as Thatcher quoted, somewhat incongruously, St Francis of Assisi. 

Mr ‘Leo’ turned out to be right. But at the time many were sceptical. I remember some liberal friends saying that they thought Thatcher would be out of power by Christmas as the unions flexed their muscles. None of us imagined Thatcher would rule Britain for almost 12 years. We waited for the U-Turn. In those days - hard to believe it now - the refrain "How will the unions react?" was on everyone’s lips. Few dared to answer "Who cares?" except perhaps Thatcher herself and one or two stern lieutenants like Norman Tebbit.

I never voted for her. When I was young - ok I’m 42 now and don’t want to sound like Charles Aznavour - but REALLY young, I remember the despair of people forced to work for three pounds an hour circa 1990. Poverty pay was a scar on the landscape. The introduction of the minimum wage remains one of New Labour’s concrete achievements. But we all underestimated Thatcher’s ability to refashion political debate.

She attacked all aspects of the consensus: redistribution, union power, the control of unemployment, incomes policies, the ‘sanctity’ of council flats remaining in the subsidised sector, state intervention and even wholesale state ownership - all these mantras were overturned.

In foreign policy Thatcher certainly lived up to her "Iron Lady" tag. When Argentina invaded the Falklands few imagined that Thatcher would be as good as her word and send a task force to recapture islands 13 000km away. But she did. She also took on Arthur Scargill and the miners and won.

It would be churlish to deny that Thatcher was a courageous politician, a signpost rather than a weathercock. But she was also helped by a weak and fractious opposition. Jim Callaghan was a tragic figure, caught between the Labour-left loonies and the right-wing ‘counter revolution’. Michael Foot led a party that was hopelessly divided and Neil Kinnock was simply not a credible alternative. The centre-left broke away and formed the SDP; the Tory wets were either dismissed or simply capitulated.

Fast forward 30 years and Britain in 2009 is in sharp social decline. On my last extended visit I was appalled. Young kids wiping their bottoms with stolen newspapers on street corners, fights for no reason, mindless vandalism at every turn. Perhaps, although I would have been loath to admit it 20 years ago, we now need a leader of Thatcher’s toughness to launch a fightback against the social permissiveness that’s ruining Britain. But one thing: please don’t reverse the minimum wage.