Everyone is allowed to express a little
extra kindness to the recently departed. It is only a truism to say that
eulogies are not objective.
But the death today of (Lady) Margaret
Thatcher has prompted the most fawning statements from her political offspring
in the modern Conservative Party. Former Cabinet member, Lord (Ken) Baker said
when she left office, the UK was the strongest economy in Europe when clearly (West)
Germany had outperformed Britain since the late 1960s.
David Cameron went even
further by claiming, “she didn’t just lead the country…she saved it.” To be a
British saviour is a quality only really attributable to Churchill. Such prosaic tributes and nauseating hyperbole give a highly false impression of such a domineering figure in
Britain’s history.
Former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, did not cow to the obsequious mood and said, “her
legacy was fundamentally wrong.” He pointed to the sale of council houses as
root cause of a chronic shortage of housing now. Her tax and industrial
policies created the underclass of benefit dependency and as a female
politician she did nothing for women’s rights whatsoever.
The Conservatives’ toadying tributes all point
to her political demise in 1990 as PM as being prompted by the introduction of
the iniquitous flat rate local ‘poll’ tax. One or two suggest she had gone too
far over her opposition to policies over the European Union. The truth is she
had lost her mental faculties to be able to carry out the onerous task of being
Prime Minister. Increasingly eccentric public performances in Parliament were
matched by delusional behaviour around the Cabinet table as chronicled by her
Deputy Geoffrey Howe when she sacked him in fit of pique.
Many of the political class who are
describing her as a great patriot are deeply selective of her version of it.
Certainly she, by her powerful political will, enabled the Falkland Islands to
be recaptured in 1982. But equally in her determination to break the National Union
of Mineworkers in the 1984-5 strike, she ensured the price the country paid was
the loss of energy self-sufficiency.
There are few political figures who have
attracted such adoration and opprobrium in equal measure. Former French
President Francois Mitterand captured both sides when he said, “ She has the
eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe.” Dr
Jonathan Miller said, “ her odious suburban gentility and sentimental,
saccharine patriotism, cater to the worst elements of commuter idiocy.”
It is not altogether easy to find many of
Thatcher’s achievements made simply for the good of her fellow man. But she did
introduce harm reduction measures and needle exchanges to slow the spread of
HIV/AIDS in mid 80s. Her scientific background overcame what appeared to be a
highly toxic media issue at the time.
However her political philosophy was
heavily influenced by Neo-Conservatives Keith Joseph and the discredited Enoch
Powell. Her view that there was “no such thing as society,” will be her epitaph
– these words constitute a philosophical heartlessness based on economic
consumerism and acquisitiveness as the sole path to the nation’s happiness.
She detested her predecessor’s, Ted Heath,
“One Nation” approach and he hated her back. At a formal photograph of former
PMs, he was asked if he could stand further to the right of her, “Not sure
that’s actually possible,” he grumbled. Her unyielding support for Chilean
tyrant General Pinochet during his arrest in Britain in 1998 showed she was
morally fallible.
But her impact on the Conservative Party is
still immense. In the Shires of rural Britain, David Cameron is still compared highly
unfavourably to her 23 years after she was deselected by her backbenchers, as
were the other four party leaders in between.
In many ways Thatcher’s greatest mark has
been on her own party, the Conservative Party have only been victorious in one
election since she won easily in 1987. All subsequent leaders have been trying
to emulate her dominance and conviction but have simply come across as divisive.
That ultimately is Thatcher’s legacy: a
nation uneasy with itself and a party trying to recapture the elusive past.
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