Charles turned 18 during the Winter of Discontent, the detritus from his birthday party lying uncollected on the mean streets of London SW6 throughout Christmas and New Year. Since then, he has been eligible to vote in 12 general elections, 16 local elections and nine European Parliamentary elections. He has confidently voted Conservative in all 37 of them, the very antithesis of a ‘shy Tory’. 

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Charles’s parents had a weak spot for Jeremy Thorpe, the dog-murdering Liberal, but studying Economics A-level from 1976-1978 turned their son into a lifelong Tory. Labour’s IMF bailout; Labour’s inability to tame the unions; Labour’s swingeing taxes on wealth creation – the socialists simply couldn’t be trusted with the economy. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, on the other hand, clearly knew what they were talking about. For the first time in Charles’s life, his age consistently outstripped the rate of inflation. As for unemployment, the other half of the era’s ‘twin evils’, it didn’t trouble him unduly, having never been south of the river, to Brixton, or north of the Watford Gap, to Toxteth. He became a City trader just in time for the ‘Big Bang’ in October 1986. Thatcher’s deregulation of the London........

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