Lord Chamberlain's readers or controllers, which were a handful of people working directly to him, were a very assorted group of people and some of them tried very hard to be as liberal as they could.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I had done a lot of reading, relative for a kid, about World War Two, and I thought about Chamberlain a lot.
Thatcher was wrong. People don't exist - well, they don't flourish - as individuals. Life's about swapping ideas and communicating with other people.
My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.
When I first met Tony Blair in 1996, he was open and idealistic, keen to bring a breath of fresh air to government. But something happened - was it just the arrogance of power? - that narrowed Labour's vision from purposeful reform and investment, to peevish and petulant pragmatism.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did more to liberate people by defeating the Soviet Union and freeing eastern Europe than the Obamas, the Clintons, and Kerrys of this world ever have. They were all on the wrong side of that debate.
The Conservatives over the years have done a great deal, from Sir John A, to Diefenbaker, and others.
The first two Prime Ministers whom I served, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher drew strikingly different lessons from the Second World War.
Blair worshipped Thatcherism, could see little or no wrong in it, believed that that was what the country needed, thought that there was no alternative, regarded it as a legacy that had to be built on rather than rejected.
Liberalism is a really old British tradition and it has a completely different attitude towards the individual and the relationship between the individual and the state than the collectivist response of Labour, and particularly Old Labour, does.
Richard Nixon was a very complex man. I don't think he was a conservative, nor liberal, not even a moderate. He was a pragmatic politician. He loved politics.