Fifty years ago, the most significant event in the recent history of the Conservative Party took place in a small office in Westminster. Mrs Thatcher was on the floor wiring a kettle for her new Centre for Policy Studies. In fact, she wasn’t wiring the kettle at all. She was re-wiring Conservatism.
NIALL FERGUSON: It was December 1973, and I was nine years old when I first heard Noddy Holder and Slade belt out the greatest of all British Christmas pop songs. I ve heard it every year since then.
Kemi Badenoch could be the next leader of the opposition. It’s a notoriously difficult job and hers is a notoriously mutinous party. But she might just have the qualities to succeed