Martin Jacques Quotes

I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning.

For the first time perhaps since Margaret Thatcher, we will have at the head of the Conservative Party someone who is genuinely an equal match for Tony Blair.

From the start of her leadership of the Conservative party in February 1975, Thatcher's style seemed shrill and uncompromising, and she became an easy object of mockery. When she left office nearly 16 years later, she was a widely recognised, but clearly still highly controversial, figure.

Margaret Thatcher always felt like an outsider in her party.

What is it we are hating? It goes beyond politics. I suppose that my fascination with [Margaret Thatcher] is not just with her political record but with her as a phenomenon.

Anyone who supposed that when Margaret Thatcher left Number Ten she was going to take a Trappist vow did not know that formidable politician.

It is quite clear that history will record that Margaret Thatcher was the greatest Prime Minister this country has had since Churchill.

Politically, I thought [Margaret Thatcher] stank. I think she had a real fight on her hands to get where she got, but I don't believe that her conviction was for the greater good.

I think psychologically [Margaret Thatcher] is really worth studying. I am reading Charles Moore's biography of her, and he has gotten us right there with a woman who lived the unexamined life, and lived it deliberately, and who has contempt for history, even her own.

Watching the Commons tribute to Margaret Thatcher was like being suffocated inside a gigantic sticky toffee pudding, but one with nasty bogeys planted inside. There was much of the 'Margaret Thatcher who was lucky enough to know me,' especially from her own side of the House.

Is Tony Blair of the Labour party? The answer to that is profoundly 'yes', but that is not how, sentimentally, he is regarded in the Labour movement generally.

While loyalists and defectors overall said John Smith did a better job of standing up for Labour's values, they put Blair ahead on representing the whole country, appealing beyond traditional Labour voters and offering strong, competent leadership; switchers to the Tories gave him a clear lead in all categories.

I hesitated, too, because for better or worse, I have been one of the principal architects of New Labour and I have worked closely with Tony Blair and the team for nearly 20 years.

I have an ambivalent relationship with Margaret Thatcher. She came to power in May 1979 - a month before my 11th birthday. I was far too young to have developed a great deal of political awareness. I remember it, though - my mother excited at the dinner table because Britain had its first female prime minister.

I never was a great Thatcher fan, and it wasn't a sad day in my life when she resigned.

I'm not a Tony Blair impersonator.

My only thought about Margaret Thatcher is the same one I had about Ronald Reagan. I hated a lot of what they did, but once in a while a country just needs a change.

Margaret Thatcher effected profound change in the society and for that she became very unpopular.

Never have I met a politician who was as certain her or she was absolutely right as Margret Thatcher.

After Margaret Thatcher's funeral, I spoke at a tribute meeting organised by her supporters in a pub next to St Paul's.

Thatcher was the best politician I have ever witnessed.

If you're dealing with a powerful leader, you're inevitably going to have a dialogue with her political past. It was always my intention to interrogate Thatcher's political life.

I like Tony Blair.

David Cameron is no Margaret Thatcher.

We've never considered ourselves overtly political, but when it comes to English politics - people like Margaret Thatcher - you cannot just stand by and ignore all that's happening around us.