In retirement, when asked whether his political influence had been greater before or after 1979, Lord Joseph replied without hesitation: “Before”. He felt that “The work had been done. If you read a thing like The Right Approach I think the work was largely there … I think it was all there, agreed, blessed by Margaret Thatcher and by Willie Whitelaw”.

The remark implies that in hindsight Joseph judged the policy exercise to have been a success. But as we have seen, he had publicly distanced himself from The Right Approach. At best, that document reflected the fact that the “wets” were now on the defensive. In turn, this development was largely due to “events”. Joseph's real contribution had been his speeches of 1974 and 1975, which had enthused existing believers in monetarism and convinced many agnostics that at least there was an alternative economic approach that might be worth trying. In short, from Joseph's point of view “The work had been done” before the official policy exercise commenced; the impact, combined with a prolonged run of misfortune for the opponents of economic liberalism, was still being felt at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

It was typically unassuming of Joseph to rest his claim to influence on what was (at least on paper) a collective endeavour rather than one of his many personal initiatives. But in this context he might have been expected to allude to his relationship with Mrs Thatcher. Hugo Young has described this as “one of the most formative political relationships of modern times”.