Margaret Thatcher dies at 87

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I guess it all comes down to how you show your disagreements. As long as you're respectful, there's no problem with putting your opinion forward.

Plus, admit many people love her and her legacy, and this will not change. Conservatives better hope she doesn't become a Reagan-like ghost, to whom all members of the party will be compared.

Thatcher is nowhere near as idolized in Britain as Reagan still is in America. Reagan's policies have been rightfully repudiated by the left here, but there is nothing close to the vitriol for the man as Thatcherism faces across the pond. At worst, he's characterized as the napper-in-chief, not as a divisive monster.

Thatcher is held up as an idol by Tories, but it's nowhere near as electorally successful. If anything, her image is still a liability for the Tories (see their lack of a majority in 2010).

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I posted this at the end of last year and stand by it:

Thatcher defined large sections of British society as her personal enemies and shaped government policy accordingly. Worse, she didn't even bother to disguise that fact. This is not something that normally happens in democracies.

This is (still) a good point and quite central when you ccompare her legacy to Reagans, since there is no way you can say the same about him.

While the two were ideological bedfellows, the basic structure of the US government rendered any attempts to implement such an agenda, in the same manner and to the same degree as Thatcher was able to do here in the UK, simply impossible.

And as such, Reagan will never attract the vitriol in the US that Thatcher does in the UK.

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I will be moderating this thread HEAVILY. Be warned.

Thank You, Alfleitch. Thank you.

I cried today. That is all I can say. I cried. I am devastated by the loss of the woman I admired more than any other.

lol, sad.

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So this just happened like 10 minutes from where I live. Seen it on twitter.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BHW8lAyCAAAXbqV.jpg:large

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Do you not understand that Chavez was a thug who forced his policies through as any dictator would? Do you not get the basic fact that Thatcher lost her share of political battles, while Chavez always won because he was the Nixon of South America? Thatcher was a democratic leader, and like her or not, deserves some respect, as does Obama, Jack Layton, or any other democratic leader. You are the hypocrite.

OK, you're not a hypocrite. You just have no idea what you're talking about.

Did Thatcher shut down opposition news services? I did not think so.

No, just other opposition organisations.

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"Ding Dong the witch is dead" steadily climbing in the music charts. Up to 31 on iTunes in 12 hours.

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It's easy for Americans to sing her praises as you didn't have to actually live with her or the consequences of her premiership.

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Really? They was two democratic elected politician, who both favoured their vote segment over the good of the country and both lacked any respect for informal check and balances and was willing to change the election structures to weaken their opponents. Chavec was nothing but a left wing version of Thatcher, no matter how much his supporters would hate to hear it.

I can understand why you would say they 'both favoured their vote segment', though how did Thatcher lack respect for checks and balances? She had a clear majority in every Parliament under her tenure. Also, how did she change the 'election structures'? It's not like the electoral system changed at all, which, her left wing opponents were badgering on about for a good while after 1983. PR and all that jazz.

Yeah, to be fair, the British constitution doesn't really give us a system of checks and balances to be respected in the first place. We have checks and balances in-name-only.

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Actually there are informal understandings about the way power should and should not be used. No government respects these fuzzy boundaries and general traditions entirely (obviously), but the Thatcher government... oh dear.

And this is actually one reason why the Tory base love her so.

That's basically what I meant. Informal understandings are exactly that, informal.

Heck, one of the greatest things Labour did was begin to modernise and codify some of the customs that Thatcher so loved to abuse. Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information, etc.

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How's your compassionate conservatism going btw? Last I heard people more or less on their deathbed were being forced out to non-existent work so you can cut their benefits?

Or is it okay, because you now accept that the right don't hold any compassion?

Mindless socialist rhetoric versus the front cover of a profound left wing paper.

I'll take the paper as better evidence.

Funnily enough plenty of evidence for it though: http://blogs.mirror.co.uk/investigations/2012/04/32-die-a-week-after-failing-in.html ?

Surely she's still considered fit to work under this government.

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Seen a few tweets by Labour MPs saying they're not going in respect to their constituents. The obvious kinds of constituencies.

Many saying Cameron's hijacking her death for political gain in calling members back to the house.


Also, honest question, but did Harold Wilson do anything similar when Clement Attlee died? The 45-51 Labour government, after all, was as objectively groundbreaking as the 79-97 Tory government was.

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Tributes now in the Commons.

Fantastic speeches by Cameron and Miliband, I have to say! Clegg seemed rather bitter and divisive. Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Conor Burns were also very good.

"Bitter and divisive" seems to be Clegg's natural tone on everything these days and that's why even people on his own side have stopped listening to him. Cameron's nowhere near as grating.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8

I loved the shout "we can't take it" from the Tory bench. Hard to take the truth indeed.

And the Speaker's reaction to fake outrage, priceless.

Typical celebrity turned politician hypocrite is hypocritical. Maybe when Glenda Jackson moves into a council house and gives her Oscar award to a homeless person I will take her seriously. At least George Galloway and Gerry Adams seem sincere in there thrashings.

Glenda Jackson was by no means born into it and she was brought up in a part of the country particularly hurt by Mags.

(Also, of note to UK posters, I'd never have guessed that Dan Hodges was her son!)

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Field's comments are strange. Hugo Chavez was also probably much better at pushing through radical reforms than both Blair and Brown. Does he admire him too?

Field was close friends with Thatcher though, don't forgot. Not to mention that he was one of the first on the Labour benches to fall out with GB and then Blair when he refused to promote him to cabinet.

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Typical celebrity turned politician

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8

I loved the shout "we can't take it" from the Tory bench. Hard to take the truth indeed.

And the Speaker's reaction to fake outrage, priceless.

Typical celebrity turned politician hypocrite is hypocritical. Maybe when Glenda Jackson moves into a council house and gives her Oscar award to a homeless person I will take her seriously. At least George Galloway and Gerry Adams seem sincere in there thrashings.

Glenda Jackson was by no means born into it and she was brought up in a part of the country particularly hurt by Mags.

(Also, of note to UK posters, I'd never have guessed that Dan Hodges was her son!)

Neither was Thatcher, or the businessmen who benefited under her? So, because Glenda Jackson was born poor, she gets to live in a nice house, which she rightfully earned by starring in excellent movies, but all the other capitalists are "cruel."

How the hell are you getting that from what I said? I wasn't comparing Glenda Jackson to Margaret Thatcher. All I'm saying is that she's not particularly sycophantic towards Thatcher because she's seen the effect that her government had over vast sections of the country.

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The Rt. Hon. Balding Welsh Git can't go the funeral. He's got another funeral to go to on the day. Doubt he'd want to go anyway.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/11/lord-kinnock-margaret-thatcher_n_3059473.html?1365677541&utm_hp_ref=uk

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R1 'will not' play full Thatcher song - BBC

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I'm in love with Margaret Thatcher is 23rd. I wonder if the BBC play that? They should play both tbh it shouldn't be up to them decide what to and what not to play.

Should go to Ofcom if they play I'm In Love With Maggie T. It's a case for bias, surely.

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I will accept that Lord Liverpool was worse.

I think you can add Baldwin and Eden to the list as well.

Neither were in office for 11 years and neither fundamentally changed the country/ruined vast parts of it.

With Baldwin as well, most of those with memory of him as PM are probably dead. And Eden's too forgettable to stir much emotion, bit like how I imagine the right'll see Gordon Brown in a few decades.