I would help my Dad drag the mattresses downstairs while my Mum bitched about the fuss and bother and then we’d all settle down to stuff Birds Eye chicken pie and Angel Delight, washed down with the finest vintage that Soda Stream had to offer. (What today’s uptight foodoo crowd would call “junk”, I imagine — though I’d match my brain against Jamie Oliver’s any day.) When the Olympics were on, we’d cheer for Lillian Board and Co because we were Brits. And when the election was on, we’d cheer for Labour because we were working class.

Simple times, simple pleasures. Party politics always seemed like the one thing you could depend on in a changing world; all through the Sixties and almost through to the end of the Seventies, hemlines may have risen and knickers may have fallen but one thing was for sure — the workers, unless they were selfloathing, voted Labour, and the toffs, unless they were self-adoring, voted Conservative. (Best summed up by that fantastic story about Lord Mountbatten; when the local Tory candidate came calling one day, the magnificent monster smirked: “Oh, we’re all socialists upstairs. go round the back and try the servants’ hall. They’re all Tories down there!”) And the admirably contrary Cornish and Devonians always attempted to thwart the straight race by voting for the Liberals. But as some smart-aleck said, we must change or perish. And who should break our long postwar consensual slumber — not with a snog but with a short sharp smack around the head with a handbag and a cry of “Look smart!” — but the Iron Lady herself.

Mrs Thatcher meant, and still means, many things — some of which she is not yet aware of herself, as we are not. Only death brings proper perspective to the triumphs and failures of a political career; it is only with the blank look and full stop of death that that old truism “all political careers end in failure” stops being true. Only a terminally smug liberal would still write her off as an uptight bundle of Little Englandisms, seeking to preserve the old order, however hard she worked that look at first; voting for her was something akin to buying what one thought was a Vera Lynn record, getting it home and finding a Sex Pistols single inside.

She was just as much about revolution as reaction, and part of any revolution is destruction. Some of the things she destroyed seemed like a shame at the time, such as the old industries — though on balance, isn’t there anything good about the fact that thousands of young men who once simply because of who their fathers were would have been condemned to a life spent underground in the darkness, and an early death coughing up bits of lung, now won’t be? It’s interesting to note that while some middle and even upper-class people choose to go into “low” jobs — journalist, actor, sportsman, plumber — which pay well and/or are a good laugh, no one ever went out of their way to become a miner. “Dogs are bred to retrieve birds and Welshman to go down mines,” said some vile old-school Tory; not any more they’re not, thanks to Mrs T.

Her appetite for destruction was more often than not spot-on. Mrs Thatcher was hated by the old Tory establishment because she, more than any Labour leader, brought down the culture of deference, of knowing one’s place. This led to the very British cultural social comedy of left-wing poshos such as the Foots being outraged by the upstart, while outsiders who should on paper have been Labour voters recognised her as one of them.

One of my younger friends, a very angry, talented, Anglo-Punjabi man of profoundly working-class origin, remembers as a child crying inconsolably for days when Mrs Thatcher was unseated by her own party. It says it all that the Queen far preferred the company of the Labour Prime Ministers Wilson and Callaghan than she did the Conservative Thatcher; the Queen could smell the lack of respect on Mrs T, and it put her back up no end.

As we approach another election, it is worth asking who is the Mad Outsider candidate this time? Just who will appeal to Addams Family Values? Howard seems like a weirdo at first sight/hearing, but to judge from his amazing wife is probably a very charming, satisfied man in real life. Kennedy is too boring to be odd; after the Major Weird stewardships of the centre by Jeremy Thorpe and David Owen, his ginger dismay is no match for the demonic darkness of these two. How weird is Blair? Not weird enough for me, though obviously too weird for some. I shall vote for him because he has banned foxhunting, and because he took us into a just war against a vile dictatorship; I’d be hoping for a few more of those during the next term, which I suppose makes me one weird woman voter, obsessed as we are meant to be with peace, childcare and fluffy bunnies. On the other hand, I find the current Labour cultural cringe towards Islam — to “make up” for the war, as if Saddam Hussein hadn’t single-handedly been responsible for the deaths of more Muslim people than the entire British and American armed forces put together! — extremely offensive, as a woman.

What would my dad do in this brave new world where there are Tory MPs who voted against foxhunting and where working-class people who are against endless immigration, because of the impact it has on their wages and social services, are routinely derided as “racist” by Labour newspapers which are written by well-insulated people whose experience of immigration begins and ends with employing a string of dirt-cheap Eastern European au pairs? He’d shake his head slowly, and say: “Girl, the world’s gone mad!” before sloping off to the Good Intent for a pint — and then, out of respect for tradition, voting Labour on the day, cussing under his breath as he made his cross.

But he would understand that I couldn’t act so instinctively, and part of him would be pleased with my perfidy. He’d see it as progress. He’d know that we are a civilisation in freefall, which has lost the security of habit, but he’d look on the bright side because it’s the only logical side to look on. He’d see the freedom bit, more than the falling bit.

No, we will never drag the mattresses downstairs and get so innocently high on E numbers and Tizer again, thanks to satellite television, Jamie Oliver and all the wonders of this brave new world. But hey, spring is in the air and an election’s round the corner, and it’s pretty damn good to be alive and living under the sort of political system that millions yearn for — and we’ve got the pleasing prospect of watching politicians jump through hoops for our favours over the next four weeks. Let battle commence — and let the weirdest man win.

julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk