As readers of Insights will no doubt be aware Baroness Margaret Thatcher, prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, died this week at 87.

Amid generous tributes, and rotten and distasteful rallies celebrating her passing, it is worth remembering her achievements and failings as prime minister.

Firstly, and most famously, Thatcher took on the power of trade unions. In Britain in the 1970s, trade unions had essentially brought down the Ted Heath Tory government and then the Jim Callaghan Labour government as a result of the famed ‘winter of discontent’ – a winter full of stoppages, strikes, shortages and piling rubbish.

Primarily the dispute between Thatcher and the trade unions was not about work conditions or industrial rights, but who had a right to govern: the elected parliament or unelected trade union bosses. The question was settled and parliament was put firmly in charge.

Second, as a result of the trade union victory, Thatcher undertook a radical reshaping of the British economy. The tax system was reformed and previously nationalised industries comprising a massive chunk of the economy were shut down, reformed or privatised (the first privatisations in the world). Council houses were sold and a property-owning democracy was encouraged.

Third, the scourge of double-digit inflation was brought under control.

However, for all the mythology around Thatcher, it should be remembered that she was neither the anti-Christ or angelic Tory saviour, but a pragmatic politician.

While it is true that the British economy was completely reshaped and reformed under her watch, government was hardly scuttled away. The scope of government was reduced, but its size as a share of the economy remained high, and spending increased.

Probably her government’s biggest failing was a failure to seriously think about what would happen to the sections of society most affected by the liberalising reforms – those whose communities had previously revolved around (often geographically concentrated) state-owned industries, for example.

The intergenerational tradition of welfarism in some parts of the United Kingdom is a pretty rotten leftover from an otherwise good and certainly necessary reform programme. Both New Labour and the Tories are still at a loss with how to deal with it.

Nonetheless, Margaret Thatcher's legacy is overwhelmingly positive and she should be remembered as a person who put the moral case for capitalism whenever she could. After the grim 1970s, she put Britain back on its feet.