I WAS present in the Chamber of the House of Commons from 2.30pm until 7.30pm just over a week ago for the tributes to Baroness Thatcher.

As a whip I remained silent but, in the event, I didn’t feel the need to add anything as it had already been very well said. These, however, are my reflections having come into politics during the Thatcher era.

My involvement in politics began in 1975 when, inspired by Enoch Powell, I joined the “No” campaign to withdraw from the Common Market in the referendum of that year – the opposite side to Maggie.

I was very interested in politics but it was not until I went up to university and joined the Conservative Party’s student organisation, that I started to appreciate the dramatic changes that were taking place in the Conservative Party under Mrs Thatcher’s leadership.

The party in which I was getting involved was increasingly one with a clear set of beliefs which was determined to change the post-war political consensus.

We believed in liberty, free enterprise, self-reliance and that the state had become far too large and powerful: we wanted a much smaller and limited government. A not insignificant number of my contemporaries and many senior members of the party thought that we were just plain bonkers and that the Tory party should remain a collection of pragmatists and never be tied to any ideology.

To be fair, I think much of what came to be known as “Thatcherism” was not new but owed a great deal to classical Liberalism and the Whigs.

However, given that the Tory party had effectively acquired large parts of those former parties, there was nothing un-Conservative about this process of intellectual revival.

What was so exciting about those times is that we were making all the running: it was the Thatcherites who were publishing pamphlets, floating ideas and new policies. In effect it was her movement that had the initiative and was setting the political agenda, despite being in opposition.

What was truly remarkable about Maggie was that when she got into power she stuck with Thatcherism, despite the entire establishment consensus urging, even pleading with her to abandon it.

I remember when 365 economists – one for every day of the year – wrote to The Times demanding that she change course. On the contrary, she changed politics and, as a number of Labour MPs acknowledged in the debate last week, she changed the Labour party too.

Far from diminishing over time, I believe her principles have become even more “bedded in”. In my estimate the 2010 intake of new Conservative MPs –which is half the parliamentary party – are the most Thatcherite ever in their outlook.

The party “coup” against Maggie in 1990 would have been inconceivable in the party as it is now made up.

Many people have emailed me to complain about the tasteless protests and “celebrations” that have been taking place. Actually they are a back-handed compliment: they represent the frustration and despair of those whose ideology she so comprehensively defeated and the lasting nature of her legacy. If there was no such legacy, they would hardly trouble themselves to protest, would they?