Cameron bears Thatcher no personal ill-will, nor does she towards him. For a time no Cameron speech was complete without its mantra that "there is such a thing as society" - twisting her words for his own purposes. But that period is over. More lasting are the consequences of the decisions he made in the course of it.

The rationale for Cameron's tactics of distancing himself from recognisably Conservative positions was to create a good impression. It was an exercise in public relations, the activity he best understands. But leaving aside the question of whether it was necessary, it has created problems for any new Conservative government, which the Thatcher government did not face. Under Thatcher, the Conservative Opposition made people face up to the unpleasant necessities of what needed to be done in order to save the country. As a result, she had a mandate - though she also needed huge resolve - to make the enormous changes which friend and foe alike acknowledge emerged from her time in office.

Under David Cameron, the Tory Opposition has done the reverse. On almost every point, appearances have prevailed and incoherence is the result. For example, Britain today is once again, as Keith Joseph used to say, "over-spent, over-taxed and over-borrowed". Yet, rather than argue straightforwardly for the large reductions in public expenditure that alone will resolve these problems, Cameron and Osborne have so far, and despite growing wobbles, proclaimed their adherence to Labour's obviously unaffordable spending plans. Perhaps in order to compensate for such timidity, Cameron has pledged to repair Britain's "broken society". Without wishing to echo the Mayor of London's description of this as "piffle", any serious analysis suggests it is wildly ambitious.