'She always was lucky in her opponents.'

David Runciman reviews Margaret Thatcher: The Authorised Biography Vol. II: Everything She Wants, by Charles Moore, at the London Review of Books.

"he does devote a chapter to recounting the failure of her enemies to understand her properly. By the mid-1980s hatred for Thatcher herself as well as what she stood for had become something comfortable and familiar to those on the other side of the political divide. As Ian McEwan wrote after her death in 2013: 'It was never enough to dislike her. We liked disliking her.'

"Moore is surely right when he says this led many on the left to mistake the nature of the challenge they faced. 'Since they thought Mrs Thatcher and her cronies were wicked, they tended to think they only had to point this out loudly enough and voters would desert the Conservatives. Never ... did they coldly analyse why she was winning, in order to ensure she would lose.' "