With the dark waters of the Thames swirling symbolically beneath his feet, the broadcaster Andrew Marr, in the most compelling episode of his history of modern Britain, now showing again on BBC2, described the final days of the Thatcher years. They were saturated, like some great tragedy, with hubris and treachery. It was ever thus. When powerful figures fall, they do so with a thump. Their sense of inner greatness diverts them, finally, from the shrewd anticipation of events. They tumble into traps set for them by lesser, but more pragmatic, players in the drama. In Thatcher’s case, it ended, naturally and literally, in tears.

It was an epochal period for British politics, all right. But Marr went further. We are all, he whispered almost conspiratorially, whether we like it or not, Thatcher’s children. Not Harold Wilson’s, nor Ted Heath’s, nor John Major’s. Her legacy is permanent in ways that theirs is not. We see it in a number of ways: in a generally bullish attitude towards the very idea of organised labour; in a profound respect for the creation of wealth; in a body politic that has permanently renounced its previously flabby ways to become lean and muscular, and cannot stop looking in the mirror to admire itself.