Given the oft-repeated observation that Mrs Thatcher was "the best man in the cabinet", it seemed not only logical but desirable to cast a man - former Spitting Image satirist Steve Nallon - to play her in my forthcoming play, Dead Sheep, which opens shortly at Park Theatre in North London. But was she also the best Jew in the cabinet? Indeed, was she the most Jewish prime minister ever?
Strictly speaking, that epithet should go to Benjamin Disraeli, who was prime minister twice during Queen Victoria's reign. But there was much about Thatcher that the Jewish community deeply admired, and vice versa. After her death, Benjamin Netanyahu described her as "truly a great leader… a staunch friend of Israel and the Jewish people."
Let's deal with the facts before we look at the shared philosophies.
She represented the constituency of Finchley, with its large Jewish population. At one stage, nearly a quarter of her cabinet were of Jewish origin: she advanced the careers of Leon Brittan, Nigel Lawson, Malcolm Rifkind, Edwina Currie and Michael Howard. She was unwavering in her belief that Britain should retain strong ties with Israel. And she was very close to Britain's late Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jakobovits ("Thatcher's Rabbi") from whom she was said to seek "spiritual reinforcement".
Trawl through her beliefs and the argument gets really compelling. Politically, she championed many concepts which are articles of faith for the Jewish community: she respected our self-reliance and abhorred a reliance on the state.
She understood aspiration and the importance of hard work. She was wedded to family: her 52-year marriage to Dennis was the bedrock of her life and her one-eyed devotion to her son Mark was plain for all to see.
She was deeply ideological and patriotic. And was there ever a more free-market, entrepreneur-friendly politician than the grocer's daughter from Grantham?
The right to buy your council home, privatisation, tax breaks for the enterprising: totemic Thatcherite policies, which would have been as popular in the Knesset as they were in the Tory heartlands of the 1980s. Small wonder she once reckoned she had more loyal constituents in Tel Aviv than Finchley.
For me, however, the most persuasive "Thatcher as Jew" argument - and the one which underpins my play - is the quintessential Thatcherite characteristic of being an outsider.
From very early on and for very good reason, she never felt part of the Tory establishment. They were mostly privately educated, privileged and born into wealth: she was not.
This in turn fostered an insecurity, which - in the later years of her premiership at any rate - she would mask with arrogance. It was to prove her undoing.
This mixture of arrogance and insecurity was invaluable when it came to the all-important task of trying to instil a dramatically credible humanity into the play. My narrative charts the events leading up to the now-legendary 1990 speech made by Geoffrey Howe which triggered her resignation. He was once her political soulmate, having been her chancellor, foreign secretary and deputy prime minister, despite his famous lack of charisma: "Being attacked by Geoffrey Howe," said his opposite number Denis Healey, "is like being savaged by a Dead Sheep" (hence the play's title).
To illustrate this insecurity and arrogance, I wrote an important early scene where Margaret admits - privately and reluctantly - her fears and self-doubts to Howe.
This is not wild surmise, by the way: I ran the scene past a cabinet minister of the time and he confirmed its credibility. But then fatal pride and haughtiness take over. She becomes increasingly dismissive to Howe, belittling him in front of the Cabinet and undermining his passionate pro-Europeanism in the Commons.
But she also - a typical outsider's fear, this - becomes increasingly paranoid about being betrayed. Eventually, Howe decides he has had enough and Thatcher's paranoia becomes self-fulfilling: he wields the dagger with a brilliantly written 18-minute speech, ending with the famous line: "It is a conflict of loyalty with which I have wrestled for perhaps too long." (I love the typically British, diplomatic understatement of "perhaps".) Nine days after that speech, Thatcher resigned.
Writing the character of Margaret, I found myself constantly comparing her to another formidable, and in this case genuinely Jewish woman: my late mother Berouia, or "Bru" as she was known. She was born in Haifa and came to this country after the war and, like the Iron Lady, she was sexy, ruthless and astonishingly ambitious and hard working. Like the former prime minister, she also had a very Manichean view of the world: you were either for her or against her.
As for seeing things from another's point of view, forget it. So, while Thatcher was routinely referring to Socialists as "The Enemy", my mother was using much the same language (if a tad more fruity) to describe the local council on account of their entirely reasonable opposition to her outrageous planning applications (six large sheds in the garden, that sort of thing.)
No prizes for guessing who my mother's political hero was. Was Thatcher the most Jew-ish PM this country has had I think so.
