This piece is taken from The Spectator’s archive 40 years ago this week. At the time, Charles Moore was the magazine’s political columnist, aged 25 (he became editor two years later). Here, he writes about the importance of Margaret Thatcher’s rhetoric, one year before her 1983 election win.

Those who are paid to survey the wicked world of politics make their easiest money from pointing out the disparity between ‘rhetoric’ and ‘reality’.