Three of Margaret Thatcher’s dresses encased in glass boxes and a stall that invited attendees at last week’s Conservative Party Conference to “ask the Iron Lady” to opine on contemporary politics. A “Thatcher fest” in her hometown of Grantham that features the “smash hit” play Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho. A grand dinner at London’s Guildhall hosted by, among others, Mark Thatcher and Joan Collins: “In a world craving true leadership, relive the legacy of the Iron Lady…” The British are truly doing an impressive job of honoring Thatcher’s posthumous 100th birthday, which falls on October 15.
Far be it from me to spit upon the grave: Thatcher was a great prime minister, up there with William Gladstone and Winston Churchill, and Thatcherism was a necessary response to a set of pressing problems. But a serious politician deserves a serious assessment: We need now to address the fact that the Conservative Party to which she devoted her life lies in ruins, that its sister Republican Party has been hijacked by an authoritarian populist, and that Thatcher herself bears some responsibility for this. Indeed, she was a leading player in the transformation of Anglo-Saxon conservatism into a revolutionary political doctrine that may have destroyed conservativism itself.
www.bloomberg.com
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