The global recession appears to have induced a collective loss of nerve: the prosperity generated by free economies is now a cause for yet more self-flagellation. Fairness is essential, but only in the sense of fair play, of playing by the rules. There is nothing fair about enforced equality of outcome. In order to make extremes of poverty in our midst unacceptable, we must make extremes of wealth acceptable again.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the free world are failing to deter the tyrants. Here, to take just one example of many, is what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran had to say on 15 April in response to President Obama's policy of the "unclenched fist": "You [the West] yourselves know that you are today in a position of weakness. Your hands are empty..." How else should a despot interpret the abject failure of the West to stand up for its values, its interests and its friends - never mind the victims of persecution?

Britain could be playing an important part in stiffening resistance to the dictators, as it did after Margaret Thatcher came to office 30 years ago. Then, as now, the economy was in free-fall. But then, too, the trade unions made it all but impossible to administer the necessary medicine, as Nigel Lawson recalls in this issue. That did not prevent her from defying conventional realpolitik and encouraging Ronald Reagan to resist the Soviet Union. The Falklands War seemed even more hazardous, but it proved by deeds as well as words that the British worm had finally turned. Having defeated syndicalism at home and communism abroad, Mrs Thatcher helped to persuade President George H.W. Bush to win the Gulf War against Saddam Hussein, the first time that the US had directly confronted a dictator since Vietnam. Just as in the two world wars, Britain proved that it could make a difference: indeed, all the difference.