Margaret Thatcher: My tears for the iron lady - Telegraph.

The mess we are in began 20 years ago today. Margaret Thatcher had fired a large enough group of "wets" that - clinging together in their mediocrity - even they felt brave enough to take her on. I was at a City dinner in the Guildhall when the news came through and Francis Pym was the speaker. He had been the first she fired. I shall never forget the look of delight on his face.

It was her own fault. She was such a strong person that she could not conceive the petty malice that constituted the political thought of most around her. She had done nothing to prepare her exit from political life. She had not sought to train a successor, probably because - as a possessor of great natural talents - she could not conceive that one would not simply emerge. In the end she was deposed for refusing to set a timetable for Britain to join EMU (the project that led to the Euro). She has lived to see a single currency fail as she predicted it must.

There was a shocking misogyny to the celebrations of her enemies, as there has been to her treatment throughout her life. Feeble John Major is seen as a statesman, for all that - in abolishing the right to silence - he was a Conservative pioneer of Labour's assault on civil liberties, but she remains "that bloody woman."

No-one else will say it so let me. Thanks, Margaret. You did your best, but we didn't deserve you.