It was here in Edinburgh that in the 1980s I joined with many others to protest against Margaret Thatcher as she arrived to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Margaret Thatcher was not a malicious person. She was a person who couldn't see, or didn't want to see, the unfairness and disadvantaging consequences of the application of what she thought to be a renewing ideology.

What (Winston) Churchill did in wartime, Margaret Thatcher did in peacetime.

They didn't even like Margaret Thatcher but at least there was Margaret Thatcher. There have been women, you know, Sonia Gandhi for heaven's sakes in India.

Margaret Thatcher was fearful of German unification because she believed that this would bring an immediate and formidable increase of economic strength to a Germany which was already the strongest economic partner in Europe.

I admired Margaret Thatcher - while abhorring much of what she offered - because she was so clearly a leader of huge substance. Blair was the dismal opposite.