From The Guardian editorial on Mrs Thatcher’s disastrous decision to go along with Dorset MP Oliver Letwin’s idea of poll tax, in spite of more sensible advice from Tory “wets”:

“A few years before Lady Thatcher and Mr Letwin became obsessed with the poll tax, the American historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book about the march of follies in human affairs, from the Trojan to the Vietnamese war. [She] argued that a folly’s success was marked by the determination of its supporters to pursue a foolish and failed policy in the face of clear arguments in favour of an alternative course. The poll tax was Mrs Thatcher’s folly. But her supporters and her party have not yet learned the lessons of her act of hubris.”