More from Richard Vinen:
In economic terms, the Thatcherite revolution benefited the young, the highly educated and the rich. Yet the rank and file Conservative Party members were old (their average age was sixty-two), poorly educated (over half of them had left school at or before the age of sixteen) and poor (six in ten had an annual income of less than £20,000). In the early 1990s, the rank and file members of the British Conservative Party — bitter, xenophobic victims of a revoltuion that their own leaders had started — bore a startling resemblence to members of the Russian Communist Party.” (p. 548)
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