Is David Cameron the second Ted Heath? If so, who is the second Margaret Thatcher and does that make Ed Miliband or Ed Balls the second Harold Wilson?

“you have to go through Heath to get to Thatcher” is apparently a saying in circulation in Westminster, in other words a tinkering Conservative Prime Minister has to have a go, and fail, before the Conservative Party reaches for radicalism. In the early 1970s Ted Heath spoke about the changes needed to save Britain but was unable to implement them when Prime Minister. It took Margaret Thatcher to rescue the country from its long post war decline under both labour and wet Conservative governments. David Cameron has long been compared to Ted Heath and he hates it, he apparently believes that Lady Thatcher was cautious at first, biding her time before implementing radical policies. I believe that we have less time now than we did in 1979/80, the debt will destroy us if radical solutions are not found.

If David Cameron is the second Ted Heath then who is the second Margaret Thatcher? I can see nobody with the balls to do the necessary job. As for which of the two Eds is Harold Wilson, it's probably Ed Balls: nasty and paranoid.

Thanks to Fraser Nelson in The Telegraph for finding the opening quotation and inspiring this piece.