PRIME Minister and Witney MP David Cameron yesterday led tributes to The Iron Lady.

Mr Cameron cut short his visit to Europe, which was due to include a meeting with French president Francois Hollande, to fly back from Spain.

He said: “It was with great sadness that l learned of Lady Thatcher’s death. We’ve lost a great leader, a great Prime Minister and a great Briton.

“As our first woman Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher succeeded against all the odds, and the real thing about Margaret Thatcher is that she didn’t just lead our country, she saved our country. I believe she’ll go down as the greatest British peacetime Prime Minister.”

“Today most of all we should think of her family. We’ve lost somebody great in our public life but they’ve lost a much-loved mother and grandmother and we should think of them today.”

Baroness Thatcher’s former foreign secretary Lord Douglas Hurd said: “Mrs Thatcher was very persistent. She would not let go. She went on and on and on until, through sheer exhaustion and exasperation, the others gave her most of what she wanted.”

Lord Hurd, MP for Mid Oxfordshire and then Witney from 1974 to 1997, said that Mrs Thatcher had managed to turn Britain’s fortunes around after the “awful” 1970s.

Former Conservative deputy prime minister and former Henley MP Lord Heseltine, who lives near Banbury, issued a statement which said: “I am sorry to learn of Lady Thatcher’s death. The illness of her last years has been cruel and very difficult. I send my deepest condolences to Mark and Carol.”