Asperger’s syndrome is a form of autism that may have affected both Andy Warhol and Richard Nixon. Now the Independent in London is saying that a leading advocate of supply side economics in Britain in the 1980s may have also been Aspergic:

Sir Keith Joseph, the father of Thatcherism whose free market principles are still followed to some extent by Tony Blair, had a form of autism that is reflected in his political philosophy, a psychiatrist believes.

The former Conservative education secretary, who was Mrs Thatcher’s mentor in the 1970s and 1980s, had Asperger’s syndrome, a condition that renders sufferers unable to interpret social situations or to empathise with other people, according to Michael Fitzgerald, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin…

Joseph – who died in 1994 – was a brilliant lawyer who served in Harold Macmillan’s government in the 1960s but was prone to eccentric behaviour and errors of judgement that can be attributed to his mental condition, Professor Fitzgerald said. In the early 1970s, he was urged by friends to challenge Edward Heath for the Tory leadership but he lost any chance of winning after making a speech in Birmingham in 1974 in which he implied that the lower classes should be deterred from having children.