Credit: Gerald Scarfe
Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female Prime Minister has died. She was not expected to become Tory top dog, nor last for long when she was first handed the keys to Number Ten. But, against the odds, she was to be the longest serving First Lord of the Treasury of the Twentieth Century. In recent years, she’d lived out her dotage away from public gaze as she slowly disappeared into the white fog of dementia. Even so, she still generates a lot of huff and puff from her disciples and her critics. Few people over 40 hold an apolitical view of her. Love her or hate her, the Iron Lady was without doubt the commanding political figure of the age with bigger balls than all the men around her. Few survived a swipe from Maggie’s handbag. I think she carried a brick in it. Expect to see an outpouring of adoration and bile, in equal measure, over the coming weeks and months. The mass media will pick over the bones of Maggie’s legacy and they’ll be heated exchanges in pubs up and down the realm. Is Britain today a fairer and more equal society? I think so but this is despite Margaret Thatcher, not because of her.
