Two former prime ministers were buried this week. One was a gloriously battling heroine of freedom, Boadicea in pearls, who put the Great back into Great Britain and won the Cold War with a little assistance from U.S. President Ronald Reagan. The other was the empress of evil, Cruella de Vil in a twinset, who smashed her country to bits. Then there is a third Margaret Thatcher, the real one masked by all the myths with which she has been embalmed since her death. This woman was a much more complex personality with a much more paradoxical legacy than either the eulogists or the haters can allow.
It is undeniable that she was a huge figure: the first and only woman to occupy Number 10, and the first person to win three elections in a row under universal suffrage. It is also unarguable that she was a transformative leader. She changed her country, her own party and their principal Labour opponents. The largest British prime minister on the global stage since Winston Churchill, she played a significant role in changing the world too.
Then we enter the land of legends. The most potent of those propagated in recent days is that she was the last "conviction politician," a superwoman of self-will who has been followed by pathetic pygmies of compromise. This is very destabilizing for today's leaders as they shiver in the shadow of this myth. If only, sigh Tories dissatisfied with their current management, David Cameron would display the steely resolve of Mrs T. If only, cry some Labour people, we roared our socialist convictions with the same zeal as she did hers.
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