Thatcherism is the big Tory scam that still distorts our politics | Aditya Chakarabortty

The Iron Lady actually grew the state and put up taxes. But in her time, as today, high earners won and the poor lost out

Among the public services performed by journalism is alerting readers to scams, and the newspapers are currently full of them. When HMRC rings up, threatening a court case unless you press 1 on your keypad, slam down the phone. Texts from Royal Mail asking for money are about as kosher as marketing from Charles Ponzi. And if an email arrives from someone purporting to be from the sainted Martin Lewis, gushing over some new platform for trading bitcoin, it's a hoax.

Politics is also rife with scams - except that you can't depend on these being exposed by the press. The biggest and most pernicious whopper doing the rounds today is about Boris's Big State. It runs thus: the prime minister is an utterly alien breed of Tory. He loves public spending and big government, those things abhorred by Conservatives ever since Margaret Thatcher took charge of the party five decades ago and made it her central mission to roll back the state. The Iron Lady's legacy is endangered by the blond Nero.