Margaret Thatcher « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Margaret Thatcher’

Cameron needs to show the Conservatives have moved on from Thatcher

09/04/2013, 03:18:09 PM

by Mark Stockwell

The events and policies that defined Margaret Thatcher’s premiership politicized much of the current generation of politicians. The legacy of her time in office, and the manner of her departure from it, continue to cast a long shadow over British politics and in particular over the Conservative Party.

By a somewhat macabre twist of fate, I found myself marking the occasion of Thatcher’s death at a recital of Fauré’s Requiem. Predictably, the wall-to-wall retrospectives of her political career have been divided between those who would have the angels lead her into paradise, and those who would condemn her to punishment in the infernal lake. Perpetual light on one side; the darkness of the abyss on the other.

The left has for the most part observed a self-denying ordinance against open outbreaks of glee. But there’s a strong sense that this is primarily for reasons of self-preservation and concern as to how voters will react, rather than out of any genuine respect for her achievements. Once a period of grace has elapsed, I confidently expect some metaphorical dancing on the grave. (Some have already rather distastefully alluded to Elvis Costello’s ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ – but she’s going to have the last laugh there by being cremated.)

Meanwhile, the entire Conservative Party has lined up to heap praise on “the woman who saved Britain”. This reaction is reasonably genuine – but it, too, is based on somewhat selective recall. Yes, the country had become almost ungovernable by 1979 and radical surgery was needed but if Thatcher hadn’t been removed when she was and the poll tax scrapped, there’s a fair chance we’d have gone full circle.

Thatcher’s political legacy to the Conservative party is also decidedly mixed. It’s hard to argue with three decisive general election victories, and no defeats. And the policies she pursued, the economic reforms she put in place, have continued to make the political weather. But the coalition she built with the voters in the 1980s was unsustainable once Labour got its act together and addressed its ongoing problem with the middle class. New Labour was the product of Thatcherism – but it was also its electoral nemesis.

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Why I hated Margaret Thatcher

09/04/2013, 08:58:20 AM

by Kevin Meagher

This is the point where I am tempted to begin by arguing that you should love the sinner, but hate the sin and critique Margaret Thatcher’s record rather than her personally. But despite the haughty entreaties of the party’s panjandrums yesterday not to let the side down with sentiments of ill will towards her, I don’t think there’s any point being a hypocrite about it: I absolutely hated Margaret Thatcher.

If you come from a working class background and especially if you live in Scotland, South Wales, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, or Tyneside, your view of Thatcher may well be equally visceral.

If, however, you come from a professional middle-class background and live in London and the south of England, you probably look askance at all this intense criticism of her. You may well think Thatcher was, overall, good for the country – as quite a few people in the Labour party will freely admit these days.

But for me (and I dare say a good few others) there was something particularly heartless about Margaret Thatcher; unforgivably so in fact. Not at an individual level, it seems, given the many tales yesterday of her personal kindnesses to friends and staff; but she knew who she despised and for them she simply had no mercy.

It always seemed as though she had her own hit list of groups in British society against which she wanted to define her ideology. Miners, steelworkers, trade unionists, local councils, benefit recipients, gay people the Irish, the Scots, the entire north of England – all were in her sights.

It was an animosity that went beyond the political; this was personal to her. She was utterly impervious to even a hint of empathy for those on the receiving end of public spending cuts, monetarism and de-industrialisation. People on the Right never seem to understand just how galling it is for decent British working people to be referred to as “the enemy within” by their own prime minister.

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Labour needs to choose freedom

25/09/2012, 05:18:38 PM

by Jonathan Todd

“The success of Thatcherism did not lie in the immediate popularity of its programme, but its ability to command the cultural landscape of Britain … The most enduring threat faced by the left is not only to be perceived as an incompetent manager of the economy, but to be out of touch with major cultural advances and the contemporary zeitgeist.”

Roy Hattersley was one leading Labour figure in the 1980s with some sense at the time of the Thatcherite threat identified by Patrick Diamond.

Freedom was coming to mean whatever Margaret Thatcher wanted it to mean: freedom from regulation; freedom from taxation; freedom from any “interference” by the “tentacles” of government.

It was all about freedom from the state and, in terms of Isaiah Berlin’s well-known dichotomy, a wholly negative concept. Taking no account of what individuals were free to do, it lacked any positive content.

The alcoholic may be capable only of begging, steeling and borrowing to their next drink. But, as long as they are unhindered by the “long arm” of government, they are free. And the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose yuppie owes them nothing. They, too, are free and the freedom of all is maximised when the role of government is minimised.

Obviously, a culture that comes to understand an idea as powerful and widely attractive as freedom in such terms is predisposed to policies that are contrary to Labour’s ends. Hattersley appreciated this. As distasteful as the yuppie and as troubling as the alcoholic are, they weren’t directly his target. This was the Thatcherite account of freedom that legitimised their conduct and circumstances. What was necessary was to reconceptualise freedom.

The freedom Hattersley articulated in Choose Freedom (1987) was a Croslandite freedom. This recast freedom in positive terms and aligned it, not with a minimalist state, but with equality: enough equality of opportunity for all to be free to achieve their potential; enough equality of outcome for all to be full social participants. There is such a thing as society and a redistributive, equalising state is needed for all to be free.

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From “Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher” to “Michael Gove, toilet snatcher”

28/02/2012, 07:00:05 AM

by Amanda Ramsay

First the Tories gave us “Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher”, now a new generation of school children are to become victims of “Michael Gove, toilet snatcher”.

Children’s charity Education and Resources for Improving Childhood Continence (ERIC) is fighting government plans to axe the requirement for a minimum of one toilet for every 20 pupils with their “Bog Standard” campaign. Cutting standards of sanitation and hygiene for children is part of the department for education’s contribution to the government’s “red tape challenge”. The consultation period on scrapping provisions in the School Premises Regulations (1999) closed in January and the changes will become law in spring.

While Michael Gove has targeted children in his Thatcherite crusade to remove statutory safeguards, teachers’ toilet facilities will remain protected under Workplace Regulations from 1992 which are the responsibility of the department for business, innovation and skills.

School toilets have a big impact on health and well-being. But many schools are failing their pupils with poorly maintained, dirty and smelly facilities. Research carried out by ERIC and online campaigners Netmums has found a quarter of pupils in England’s schools avoid using toilets because they are so dirty.

The consequences for children of not being able to go to the toilet are severe with issues of soiling and bullying making school life a misery for many. Lobbying parliament on Tuesday, ERIC will target government ministers, MPs and Peers with a petition from angry parents demanding action.

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Labour should recover its patrician socialist streak

18/08/2011, 01:00:30 PM

by Kevin Meagher

At one time we would have known who and what to blame. Last week’s rioting and looting would be been parked at Mrs Thatcher’s door and the social and economic forces she unleashed three decades ago. We would have talked about the rioters being “Thatcher’s children”, throwing back at Tory ministers their heroine’s invocation that “there is no such thing as society” as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hardly anyone in Labour is making that case today. Labour politicians have, in the main, kept their own counsel this past week, content to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the government and rattle their sabres when required. The violence has been “mindless” and the police should do whatever is “necessary” to restore order.

By raising the spectre of spending cuts and unemployment as a trigger to the disturbances, Ken Livingstone found himself a pretty lone voice. On Monday, Ed Miliband carefully tied the disturbances to his broader riffs about a lack of responsibility in society affecting those from top to bottom. Sure, he had a swipe at the government’s “gimmicks” in response to the disturbances, but his criticisms were narrowly scoped.

In contrast, David Cameron is letting it all hang out. He tells us we are witnessing a “slow-motion moral collapse”. In this analysis poverty, unemployment and spending cuts have little effect on the choices people make. This is a familiar retreat into the right’s simplistic comfort zone: bad people do bad things.

We should not be surprised. Many Tory politicians simply have no idea about the lives of those at the bottom of the pile. Why would they? In the main, they neither represent them nor socialise with them. This is when having a cabinet of millionaires begins to tell.

Given that it is Labour, in the main, which speaks for these communities, the onus is on us to articulate why what happened, and propose what can be done to avert it in the future.

But the problem is that we hardly know these rampaging young people any better than do the Tories. Truth to tell, we don’t know their parents much either. We have to go back two generations, to a time when the British working class was a recognisable and largely homogeneous bloc. As it has eroded, so, too, has our instinctive understanding of it.

First the traditional jobs went. Then social solidarity and identity crumbled. Now their offspring eschew the respectability that was once so much a part of the working class experience. As the working class broke apart to form a broader lower middle class and a group of “others”, we ended up understanding neither. It took us until 1997, before we managed to reconnect with the first: the Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman of focus group lore.

But the others? We don’t even have a proper name for them. To call them an underclass – shapeless, amorphous – does little to further our understanding. However we badge them, they do not, in the main, make sympathetic “victims”. The parade of surly, track-suited wastrels swaggering in and out of magistrates’ courts, covering their faces while flicking the finger, do little to instil a charitable concern for their circumstances. (more…)

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Politics is boring and irrelevant

18/08/2011, 07:30:09 AM

by Peter Watt

I went to Chessington World of Adventures today. While sat on the “Jungle Bus” with two of our kids, watching thousands of people enjoying an August day out, it suddenly dawned on me. Sometimes politics inspires and excites. And sometimes it just doesn’t. Right now, I think that politics is hell-bent on persuading much of the public that it is all just an irrelevance.

People at Chessington were probably worrying about rising utility bills, that it costs a small fortune to fill up the car and how their weekly food bill just keeps creeping up. They may be worried about their job or how they will pay for Mum’s care. But I bet that hardly any of them thought that politicians had the answer. And I thought all of that, when I should have been enjoying the stomach churning delights of the ride.

If I think back just over my lifetime, there have been some pretty exciting and inspirational periods. Margaret Thatcher remains a figure of hate for many on the left, but there is no doubt of the extent to which she dominated the political scene. Who can forget the sense of something important having happened when she stood on the steps of Downing Street reciting St Francis of Assisi? Over the next ten years she took on and beat the trade unions; liberated the Falklands; played her part in glasnost and changed the direction of the British economy. Whatever you thought of her, you knew that with her in charge politics mattered, the battles between the parties were keenly felt, emotions often ran high and she seemed to inspire adoration and hatred in equal measure. (more…)

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Monday News Review

04/07/2011, 06:04:55 AM

A care revolution

The Dilnot Report will suggest an overhaul to the system which is intended to benefit Britain’s ageing population. Under the current system elderly people only start to receive state support when they are down to the last £23,250 of their assets. People would instead pay up to a capped amount – expected to be around £35,000 – before state-funding kicks in. It’s possible that a tax rise or further cuts in public spending would be necessary to pay for this. Estimates suggest the proposals would cost the Treasury £2bn at the start before rising further. Experts estimate that a maximum liability of £50,000 could be insured for a one-off premium of around £17,000 on retirement. The report has partly sought to make clearer the burden of cost facing the elderly so people can prepare and save for it during their working life. Charities working with elderly and vulnerable people have cautiously welcomed the report and suggest changes are long overdue. The Labour leader Ed Miliband has publicly offered to hold talks with the Prime Minister to achieve cross-party agreement on the proposals. The government is not expected to make any changes immediately, instead weighing up the best course of action and deciding who will pay and how. The current system of support for the elderly is widely regarded as a lottery, as one quarter of 65-year-olds will not need to spend significant sums on care, while another quarter will face bills of more than £50,000 and one in 10 – often those who spend long periods in residential homes suffering from dementia – will have extensive needs costing more than £100,000. Some 20,000 people a year are thought to sell their homes to pay for care. – Sky News

A long-awaited shake-up of the way elderly people contribute to their care home bills will be announced today. The report is expected to recommend OAPs should pay no more than £50,000 towards their stay. The Treasury would pick up the rest of the bill – meaning fewer people will be forced to sell their homes. Care would remain free for those with very few savings or assets. But millions of people will be urged to take out insurance costing up to £17,000 to cover care fees. The measures drawn up by Andrew Dilnot are seen by many as the last best hope to pay for our growing elderly population. Health Secretary Andrew Lansley yesterday signalled the measures could come into force by the end of Parliament in 2015. But there are fears the £2billion-a-year cost of the plans could see Chancellor George Osborne strangle the proposals at birth. Labour leader Ed Miliband said: “The last thing Britain needs is for Andrew Dilnot’s proposals to be put into the long grass. We three party leaders are of similar age and the same generation. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity which our generation must address.” – Daily Mirror

Local councils are poised to take on a major financial services role under proposed reforms to be unveiled on Monday of the funding system for the care of elderly and disabled people. Under the scheme, local authorities will be empowered to make a loan at a preferential rate against the value of a property owned by someone entering a care home. The loan would be redeemed on the sale of the property after the person dies. The plan is part of a series of ideas drawn up by a government commission led by the economist Andrew Dilnot. The proposals seek to inject more funding into the care system by tapping into people’s assets. The typical 55- to 64-year-old in the UK has a total wealth of £200,000. Although the centrepiece of Dilnot’s report will be a recommended cap of about £35,000 on individual liability for care costs, which would require underwriting by the government, other proposals will seek to make it easier for people to draw on their assets without having to sell their home during their lifetime. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, about a million elderly homeowners have properties worth more than £100,000 yet qualify for means-tested benefits. Charities and welfare groups are calling on the government and Labour to seize the opportunity presented by Dilnot to begin a shakeup of the care funding system. An open letter from 26 leading charities declared on Sunday: “We expect all parties to deliver on this.” Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has reiterated his offer to engage in cross-party talks on the Dilnot proposals with an “open mind”, setting aside his party’s previous policy of a national care service. – the Guardian

Goldsmith gloats

Ed Miliband’s faltering leadership suffered a fresh blow yesterday as a close ally of Tony Blair warned it was ‘not clear what he stands for’. Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith launched a withering attack on the Labour leader, warning that nine months after his election he still has to ‘prove himself’. He said the party’s Blairites were ‘standing back’ to give Mr Miliband a chance. But asked whether the Labour leader was connecting with the public said: ‘He doesn’t at the moment. It is not clear what he stands for.’ Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper – seen by many at Westminster as a future Labour leader – yesterday insisted that Mr Miliband’s leadership was not ‘faltering’. She said he was doing a ‘good job’ but urged critics to give him more time to impose himself and connect with the public in the wake of last year’s election defeat. Lord Goldsmith’s intervention came amid reports that the Blairite, ex-Cabinet minister James Purnell was being urged to return to Parliament to help rescue Labour from the leftwards drift seen under Mr Miliband. – Daily Mail

Lord Goldsmith suggested Mr Miliband was harming Labour by excluding major figures from the Blairite wing of the party. He named former minister James Purnell, who quit as an MP last year, as a “loss” and “potentially a very important figure in the party”. It came amid reports that Mr Purnell – who quit the Cabinet in 2009 in a failed bid to oust Gordon Brown and now heads a think tank – is being urged by figures close to Mr Blair to return to Westminster to stave off another election defeat. Lord Goldsmith, who was Attorney General under Tony Blair, said he did not believe the rifts had been healed between Left wingers seen as loyal to Mr Brown – such as Mr Miliband – and those from Mr Blair’s camp. “I think people are standing back, letting Ed Miliband have an opportunity to prove that he can do it – and that, at the end of the day, is what matters,” he told Sky News’s Murnaghan programme. Asked if the Labour leader was connecting with voters, he replied: “He doesn’t at the moment. It is not clear what he stands for.” The question, he said, was whether Ed Miliband had healed the Blair-Brown split and “whether there are enough Blair heavy hitters in his shadow cabinet”. He went on: “I think many of us would like to see more of them back. There are very powerful figures still able to help Ed Miliband and they are being excluded and that is a problem.’’ – Daily Express

Huhne under increased pressure as son’s phone becomes evidence

Chris Huhne’s former marital home has been raided as part of a police investigation into allegations he persuaded his wife to take responsibility for a speeding offence that he had committed so he could avoid a driving ban. Officers from the Kent and Essex Serious Crime Directorate visited the home in Clapham, south London, where the Energy Secretary’s former wife, economist Vicky Pryce, lives. They confiscated the mobile phone of the pair’s son, Peter, 18. The phone is alleged to contain an exchange of text messages between Mr Huhne and his son in which the pair discuss the investigation into the March 2003 speeding offence. – the Independent

Pressure was mounting on Chris Huhne last night after it emerged that police raided his ex-wife’s home and seized his son’s mobile phone. The Cabinet minister is fighting for his political career over claims he persuaded Vicky Pryce to accept a speeding conviction on his behalf. Detectives with a search warrant raided Ms Pryce’s £2million home at 7am, woke 18-year-old Peter and asked him to hand over the mobile, which reportedly contained a text message exchange in which the pair discuss details of the case. Energy Secretary Mr Huhne currently has the backing of Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg but insiders say patience is running out due to the constant trickle of stories about him. Ms Pryce, 57, told friends of her shock when the three Essex Police officers turned up unannounced at her South London home. Mr Huhne, 56, denies persuading her to take three points for him but a photograph of her licence shows an endorsement for speeding on March 12, 2003 – the date his car was allegedly caught on camera. Relations between the couple broke down when he left her for media consultant Carina Trimingham last year. – Daily Mirror

It’s that lady again

Voters rate Margaret Thatcher the most capable Prime Minister of recent decades, but Tony Blair was the most likeable, according to a poll. Only ten per cent regarded David Cameron the most capable and 17 per cent the most likeable. Current Conservative voters overwhelmingly preferred Lady Thatcher, with two-thirds saying she was the most capable compared with one-fifth for Cameron. Overall, 36 per cent of those questioned said Thatcher – Tory Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 – was the most capable leader of the past 30 years. She was followed by Mr Blair on 27 per cent, Gordon Brown on 11 per cent, Mr Cameron, ten per cent and Sir John Major, seven per cent. When asked about likeability as a person, some 26 per cent put Mr Blair first, followed by 22 per cent for Lady Thatcher, 17 per cent for Mr Cameron, 13 per cent for Mr Brown and ten per cent for Major. – Daily Mail

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Monday News Review

20/06/2011, 06:25:26 AM

Hutton urges Labour to back his pension reforms

The former Labour business secretary charged by the coalition with overseeing its contentious pensions reforms has called on his party leader to back his plans and ask union leaders to stop threatening strikes. Lord Hutton said people had to face the “reality” that public sector pension reform was necessary and that strikes would not “make this problem go away”. When asked if Ed Miliband should oppose the threat of industrial action by the unions that backed him to become party leader, Hutton said “of course”. He also said he would like to see Miliband endorse his report. The government and unions have been at loggerheads since the end of last week when ministers went public with plans to extend the retirement age and increase pension contributions for millions of public sector workers. Union leaders felt that ministers had pre-empted negotiations with the announcement. The head of Unison, Dave Prentis, and other union leaders threatened the biggest wave of industrial action since the general strike of 1926 after the chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, made the announcement on Friday. The Treasury later said that Alexander was articulating proposals for reform, not settled government policy, but Prentis said that Alexander’s speech had effectively rendered the talks meaningless. – the Guardian

Lord Hutton, the Labour peer who drew up proposals for slashing the cost of state-sector pensions for the Government, yesterday pressed the Labour leader to use his influence to call off the disastrous strike. His intervention came after increasing criticism of the Labour leadership for failing to condemn the one-day national strike planned by teaching and civil service unions on June 30. Lord Hutton, a Cabinet colleague of Mr Miliband in the last Labour government, said: “Strikes won’t make this problem go away, we have to act now. If we don’t, it’s our kids who are going to pick up the tab and it’s not right.” Asked whether he would like to see Mr Miliband back his recommendations, Lord Hutton replied: “I’d like him to endorse the report I produced, yes, because I think it does strike the only fair balance.” Pressed on whether Mr Miliband should “call off” industrial action over pensions, he said: “Of course.” Unions yesterday intensified their rhetoric against the Government in the increasingly bitter dispute. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, insisted the unions would “win” by using “smart” tactics of frequent short strikes rather than the mass confrontations of the 1980s. Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union representing civil servants, said: “I think if the Government isn’t prepared to change course in the negotiations that we are having after that strike, we will see unions representing millions more move to ballot members for strikes in the autumn.” – Daily Express

Cameron’s bad dad rant rebuked

DavidCameron hit out at fathers who run out on their children yesterday and said absent dads deserve to be shamed in the same way as drink drivers. The Prime Minister described family life as the “cornerstone of our society” and said fathers had a financial and emotional duty to support their kids. But experts called his comments an extraordinary “contradiction” because new Government rules will actually make it harder for single parents to chase up errant fathers. Not only will they have to pay £100 simply to apply to the Child Support Agency, they then face losing between 7% to 10% of the money they receive in charges. Sadly, Mr Cameron and his Government are making life harder for single parents at the moment. They propose making single parents pay a fee and ongoing charges for the Child Support Agency to collect money from runaway dads. It would consist of an upfront application fee of £100 plus an extra ongoing charge of between 7% and 12% of the money paid. The proposals will act as a disincentive to using the CSA. The people who use it at the moment are the people who need it. They can’t make private arrangements, either as they don’t know where the dad lives or because he is deliberately avoiding and refusing to pay. Sometimes there is a lot of conflict and the mother doesn’t feel able to negotiate an agreement. In those situations, you need help from a statutory agency but £100 is a big chunk of money to pay just to start using the CSA. The people more likely to use the agency are those in more difficult circumstances. They tend to be poorer and to have more difficult relationships with the other parent. They are disadvantaged single parents. We need the CSA to be there for exactly those type of parents. The proposals make Mr Cameron’s comments yesterday all the more extraordinary. – Daily Mirror

David Cameron was accused of double standards after calling for fathers who abandon their families to be “stigmatised”, while backing policies which could make it more costly for mothers to pursue them for financial support. In an article yesterday, the Prime Minister said “runaway dads” should feel the “full force of shame” in a similar way to drink drivers. Labour said government reforms would make it easier for fathers to escape their financial responsibilities, by charging mothers to use the Child Support Agency. Earlier this year, the Government announced a consultation on proposals to encourage parents to reach their own arrangements for child maintenance – rather than relying on the state – by introducing a fee. The shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said Mr Cameron’s approach was deeply flawed.”Fathers should take their responsibilities seriously, but he is charging mums when the father leaves now to go into the CSA [Child Support Agency],” Mr Balls told the BBCs’ The Andrew Marr Show. “He is going to make it harder with his marriage tax cut [which] will disadvantage the woman left behind and give the tax break to the father who goes off.” – the Independent

Huhne attacks Coalition partners over green laws

The energy secretary, Chris Huhne, has attacked his Conservative colleagues in government as “rightwing ideologues” and “deregulation zealots” for placing environmental regulations on a list of red tape to be considered for scrapping. In comments made at the weekend to a conference of social democrats in his party, Huhne made it clear he is opposed to environmental protection laws such as the Climate Change Act, the Wildlife and Countryside Act and the National Parks Act being included in the government’s review of regulations in force in the UK. His views are thought to reflect a range of opinion within Liberal Democrats in government. A source close to Huhne said he was supported by the business secretary, Vince Cable, and Lib Dem ministers were braced to do battle over hundreds of regulations they believe their Tory colleagues will be inclined to discard. The move is part of a Lib Dem strategy to fight their corner more aggressively that has been evident in the party leadership’s successful opposition to the NHS changes. Huhne said: “Between the obsession with micro-management and target-setting displayed by the Labour party, and the fixation with deregulation and scrapping rules just because they are rules on offer from some rightwing ideologues, we Liberal Democrats have a real chance to define an evidence-based, intelligent and distinctive approach.” – the Guardian

Ed’s Maggie fixation

Ed Miliband was denounced for ‘naked and cynical positioning’ last night after his aides said he ‘admires’ Margaret Thatcher and is using her as his inspiration to become Prime Minister. The Labour leader is reportedly studying the methods she used to remove Labour from power in 1979, and based his recent pledge to crack down on welfare scroungers on similar moves by Lady Thatcher. However, his claims to be a ‘fan of Maggie’ were dismissed as a stunt by Tory MPs. And they are undermined by a new book which reveals his ‘glee’ when she was forced out of Downing Street in 1990. A new book, Ed: The Milibands And The Making Of A Labour Leader, by Left-wing journalists Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre, reveals that the future Labour leader spent 24 hours celebrating her downfall and wrote of his ‘elation’. At the time, Mr Miliband was a 20-year-old at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he earned a reputation as a Left-wing firebrand student leader in his role as president of the Junior Common Room (JCR). The book describes his reaction to Mrs Thatcher’s downfall: ‘Like so many Labour students, Ed couldn’t contain his glee, referring in the JCR president’s newsletter to the “elation among many Corpus undergraduates.”’ ‘He was ecstatic,’ said a friend. ‘All of us were. We didn’t leave the college TV room for 24 hours. It was the biggest event of our lives.’ – Daily Mail

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It is wrong to hate Margaret Thatcher, says Kevin Meagher

21/10/2010, 12:29:14 PM

SO the Iron Lady has started to rust. Lady Thatcher will remain in hospital – needless to say a Bupa one – to treat her bout of flu. Her son, Mark, says his mother is “in good order”, an unusual formulation, usually reserved for descriptions of used cars.

Some will sneer at her predicament. Her detractors are measured in tens of millions. But she is a sick, elderly grandmother suffering, as her daughter Carol confirmed two years ago, from dementia. Whatever her faults as a politician – and they are legion – she deserves compassion now.

This is not to diminish the appalling policy choices Margaret Thatcher made in her 11 years as prime minister. Thatcherism and the Tory party which propagated it are enduringly loathsome. But we should not hate her. (more…)

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