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Our MEP has written an article about Mrs T in the Telegraph which I found very interesting. Given the rabid attacks on Mrs T in this thread I think it only fair to reproduce the article here and I think it is worth doing so in full. I have had many debates on here about Mrs T and decided that getting enaged in this one would be pointless. But just to even up this debate here is the article by Dan Hannen and it appears in the Telegraph:
------Posted By: Daniel Hannan at Dec 4, 2008 at 16:59:57 [General]
A play is about to open in London, based on the aftermath of Margaret Thatcher's death. Two Leftie friends of mine are going, slavering with anticipation. "It won't be a patch on when the real thing happens, though," said one, in a half-jokey manner that was intended to enrage me - and did.
Lefties can be selfless and high-minded. They can also be envious, self-regarding and downright spiteful. Rarely are they as nauseating as when discussing Margaret Thatcher, whose eventual demise is regarded as a topic of legitimate celebration by BBC comedy writers and Guardian columnists.
Their dislike, for what it's worth, is wholly unreciprocated. Margaret Thatcher is often described as a divisive leader, and there is an element of truth in the charge. She never fantasised, Blair-like, about rising above party and representing the entire nation. She was much readier to think in terms of us and them: how to help people who wanted to get on, work, buy their homes and so on; and how to circumvent those who wanted to stop them. Yet her politics never became personal: she never hated her opponents and, to this day, talks of them with a handsome generosity.
I was lucky enough to sit next to the great lady at a small dinner party given last night by my friend Dominic Johnson: a man of colossal energy, intelligence and charm whom I have long been tying to persuade to stand for Parliament. It was a huge improvement on our last meeting, when I managed to hit the former PM on the shoulder while making an expansive point ("Don't worry, dear, don't worry: we're quite alright"). Like many people of her age, she is most animated when talking of remote times, and we had long conversations about Dartford, where she stood as a candidate before being selected in Finchley, about the EU, and about the Falklands War: the formative event of my childhood. We talked, too, of the English Civil War, and which side one ought to have picked. And we talked of Michael Foot, whom I have always regarded as one of the greatest figures of the Twentieth Century. She couldn't have been warmer about her old rival, praising his integrity, his intellect, his rhetorical ability and his personal decency.
As I came home, I thought: not many Labour people talk about their opponents that way. And perhaps this tells us more about them than about their opponents.
Why do Lefties hate Thatch so much? Because she presided over the collapse of the old industries? It must surely be obvious by now that nothing would have kept the dockyards and coalmines and steel mills open. A similar process of deindustrialisation has unfolded in every other Western European country, and the only parties that still talk of "reviving our manufacturing base" are Respect, the Scottish Socialists and the BNP.
No, what Lefties (with honourable exceptions) find so hard to forgive is the lady's very success: the fact that she rescued a country that they had dishonoured and impoverished; that she inherited a Britain that was sclerotic, indebted and declining and left it proud, wealthy and free; that she never lost an election to them. Their rage, in truth, can never be assuaged; for it is the rage of Caliban.---------------end.