Iron Lady praised Best PM since Winnie: Spouse

The Toronto Sun ^ | August 4 2003 | AP

[xp38]

LONDON -- Margaret Thatcher was Britain's best prime minister since Winston Churchill and her resignation spelled disaster for the Conservative party, her late husband said in an interview broadcast yesterday. In a documentary recorded before his death June 26, Sir Denis Thatcher also said his wife's successor, John Major, had been a "ghastly prime minister."

"The whole situation in the Conservative party today springs from that night, when they dismissed the best prime minister the country has had since Churchill," he added, in the Channel 4 television program Married to Maggie.

Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first female PM and led the Tories from 1979-1990.

She championed a forceful brand of conservatism, crushed the once-mighty trade unions, privatized public-owned utilities and sent British troops to recapture the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.

But after more than a decade in office, she was driven to resign by a party revolt.

She learned that a challenger had polled enough votes to deny her re-election as leader while she was attending a summit in Paris in November 1990 and resigned two days later.

"If you're in politics you expect to be knifed in the back," said Lady Thatcher, 77, who was interviewed for the documentary in March.

[eyespysomething]

Margaret Thatcher, along with Ronald Reagan, were 2 of the greatest leaders our world has had, at a time we needed great leaders.

She and Abigail Adams are my role models.

[You Dirty Rats]

The Tories got what they deserved.

[BlackElk]

Well, the Tories listened to their TINOs who assured them that having as PM Maggie, the back-bencher who disposed of that elitist yacht-sailing twit Edward Heath, was simply agonizing at their polo clubs and furthermore she openly admired Ronaldus Maximus and even co-conspired with him and, and, and little Muffy and Skipper are not speaking to Popsy since he has voted repeatedly as a Torie MP for Maggie as PM, and, and, she is just beastly and seldom nibbles watercress sandwiches with her pinky in the air. Finally they got to the TINO trump card: Someone as reactionary as Maggie can never win Califor....., ummmm, errrrrrr, Great Britain!!!! Yes, yes, that's the ticket.

AND if the Tories hadn't dumped that awful, populist Maggie, they would not have retained the Prime Minister's Office and their majority to this very day.

[You Dirty Rats]

At least now we know why they were called the "Wets" -- they p*ssed all over themselves.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Remarkable how much of a resemblence between Thatcher-Major as there was with Reagan-Bush, Sr. Major was indeed a disaster. The British Tories seem rather rudderless in terms of an ideological center these days. They don't know what the heck they stand for. Just like the NJ RINOs with the upcoming election, the Tories may still win the majority in spite of themselves.

[Impy]

Why spefically did they dump her?

[BlackElk]

I am not as sure as I might have been a few years ago, but my best shot at why they dumped Maggie is as follows:

She had a Defense Minister from the Yacht Club wing of the Tory Party whose name was Norman Heseltine. Britain was going to make a major purchase of helicopters or military aircraft of some sort. Maggie had determined to give the contract to an American firm (UTC's Sikorsky of Stratford, Connecticut?) and Heseltine was determined to give the contract to his Euroweenie buddies which would be much more popular in his social set. Whether or not Heseltine was also refreshing his family's financial coffers by, ummmm, considerations rendered, we shall probably never know.

Short answer: The helicopter deal was a harbinger of whether Great Britain would keep its sovereignty or cave to the Euro crowd. Maggie would NEVER cave on the pound sterling at a minimum and would probably resist further erosion of British sovereignty.

It is really too bad that she was not an American citizen because we really could have used her as President when Ronaldus Maximus's two terms were up. You can bet that the first Gulf War would have been Saddam Hussein's last.

While Maggie was off transacting Great Britain's business elsewhere, she was stabbed in the back by Heseltine and a coalition of the amoral, the unmanly, the ungrateful and the terminally watercress-addicted among the Tory MPs at an annual Tory Conference. This combination of geniuses replaced her with the negatively "brilliant" John Major (as clueless a PM as even England has ever suffered). In short order, he and his backers brought the Tory Party into such utter disrepute that Labor returned emphatically to power.

Today, at least as to manhood in foreign and military affairs, Tony Blair seems more of a Tory than the Tories who, having backed his move in Iraq, are now trying to geld Blair over Iraq and sounding like American leftists or neo-isolationists. The Tories are coming full circle and will soon be putting Neville Chamberlain's portrait along side those of Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, and Kofi Annan in a place of honor in their party headquarters and denying that they ever knew Churchill or Maggie.

Bank on it, polls or no polls, Blair wins his next election handily unless the paleo-Marxist wing of his party dumps him. If that happens, we should offer him American citizenship and membership in the GOP after appropriate re-education as to matters economic and social.