Perhaps you would remember her differently if you were Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, (East) German, Hungarian, Czech, Slovakian, Rumanian, or Bulgarian.

Without a doubt it depends on what she did, or said, personally affected an individual.
She opposed German unification for instance. So, why you include East Germans in your list I'm not sure as she's not the intrepid enemy of the iron curtain there only...
But I guess that makes it understandable why the current press in the UK, and why people in the UK, aren't as respectful of her passing as some would like.
My impression is that Britons seem to have a different relationship to their political leaders because they are a Monarchy. (Same as Canada.) They aren't perceived to be symbols for the nation and as such don't get the protection offered by their office that the president of the US does... That is, there is a respect for the Office of the President that the politician in the office enjoys by default.
The office of the Monarch or Governor General enjoy the respect for the office as an institution. And do as little as possible in order to continue to receive that respect.
A Prime Minister is considered to be a politician first and foremost, and as they go about enacting their agenda they are bound to create both fans and enemies.
Its much more confusing in the US where institutional symbols and the reality of politics get intermingled.

Good point on Germany.

It's interesting to me how there are different narratives depending on where you sit. In the conservative press, it's about Britain was close to bankruptcy, she broke the unions that were strangling productivity, she de-nationalized companies that were grossly inefficient, she lowered the tax rate from 90% plus to 40%, and started an economic boom that propelled England from a declining power to a productive economy. Ricky and Danivon have shared a different narrative. I find the former more compelling, but that's where we end up on many of these discussions.

Ray Jay wrote:Good point on Germany.

It's interesting to me how there are different narratives depending on where you sit. In the conservative press, it's about Britain was close to bankruptcy, she broke the unions that were strangling productivity, she de-nationalized companies that were grossly inefficient, she lowered the tax rate from 90% plus to 40%, and started an economic boom that propelled England from a declining power to a productive economy. Ricky and Danivon have shared a different narrative. I find the former more compelling, but that's where we end up on many of these discussions.

And, she was spot on about the Euro, even predicting that the weak sisters would need bailouts from Germany.

On Obama: I think there are far fewer "noose people" in the US than there are those who celebrated Thatcher's death in the US.

Look, I hate his policies. However, it's not just his fault: 51% of the electorate was stupid enough to overlook his first-term failings and blithely believe he knew what he was doing. I am more upset with the ignorance of those who voted than I am with the policies of a man we all should have known was a smooth-talking, incompetent community organizer.

It's worth pointing out that Thatcher's poll numbers are significantly better than any other PM since Churchill. There are more who see her as one of the alltime greats than there are who hate her, it's just that the latter group are more vocal.

My personal view is that her overall contribution was a positive one, but living where I do I can't get away from the fact that her adoption of shock therapy in the economy and her campaign to destroy the power of the unions in the traditional heavy industries was overzealous. Sheffield has never really recovered from the mass redundancies of the 1980s. It plunged the whole city into welfare dependancy and social alienation. To some extent this was a natural and inevitable outcome of deindustrialisation which would have happened anyway, but the brutal nature of the way Thatcher's policies brought about the collapse of Sheffield and other industrial cities is a bitter pill to swallow and I can totally understand why she's still reviled in certain parts of the country. It didn't have to be this way. The old, inefficient industries could have been wound down gradually and people could have been helped to find alternatives.

You tend to find that hatred of Thatcher is most common in places like Sheffield and other old industrial heartlands that fell on hard times under her watch. People have long memories, and nobody votes Conservative anymore in the old working class cities of the North.

Sassenach wrote:It's worth pointing out that Thatcher's poll numbers are significantly better than any other PM since Churchill. There are more who see her as one of the alltime greats than there are who hate her, it's just that the latter group are more vocal.

My personal view is that her overall contribution was a positive one, but living where I do I can't get away from the fact that her adoption of shock therapy in the economy and her campaign to destroy the power of the unions in the traditional heavy industries was overzealous. Sheffield has never really recovered from the mass redundancies of the 1980s. It plunged the whole city into welfare dependancy and social alienation. To some extent this was a natural and inevitable outcome of deindustrialisation which would have happened anyway, but the brutal nature of the way Thatcher's policies brought about the collapse of Sheffield and other industrial cities is a bitter pill to swallow and I can totally understand why she's still reviled in certain parts of the country. It didn't have to be this way. The old, inefficient industries could have been wound down gradually and people could have been helped to find alternatives.

I find this notion of quick and brutal vs. gradual to be very interesting. In some ways, I think that the US is like the pre-Thatcher UK. We have become ungovernable with polarized ideologies and politics. we can't even seem to do the easy things like standing up to the ethanol lobby or stopping much of the Sat. mail delivery. If you make the change gradually, the special interest retains its footing and keeps the program alive and feeding at the federal trough. Eventually the politics realigns and the program grows back more convoluted and more expensive than before. Perhaps the only way to make change is to do it quick and brutal.

Ray Jay wrote:I find this notion of quick and brutal vs. gradual to be very interesting. In some ways, I think that the US is like the pre-Thatcher UK. We have become ungovernable with polarized ideologies and politics. we can't even seem to do the easy things like standing up to the ethanol lobby or stopping much of the Sat. mail delivery. If you make the change gradually, the special interest retains its footing and keeps the program alive and feeding at the federal trough. Eventually the politics realigns and the program grows back more convoluted and more expensive than before. Perhaps the only way to make change is to do it quick and brutal.

So true.

When we look at individual items, like the ethanol subsidy, we know it makes no sense--raises food prices, raises gasoline prices, and it wastes energy, all while costing us money, yet we can't stop it? We know something must be done about the USPS, but we can't? We know Social Security has to be adjusted, but that can only be done if taxes are raised?

Why? Because in each case, lobbying groups and fanatical political bases stop any sort of solution.

We need someone who will speak boldly and plainly--and have a steel spine.

Pick me! Pick me!

The rise of a Maggie Thatcher in the US is less likely because of the different political systems.

In the British parliament, a majority provides a Prime Minister with license to enact policies for the period of his/her mandate . Even the House of Lords isn't in practice, a consequential impediment to laws passed in the House.

In the US the House and the Senate are separate and even if the President's party is in majority there are more limitations to the President enacting policies than in the UK>
A single senator can block legislation. Legislative procedures can limit movement on a bill, and "super majority" in the Senate is also a requirement...
Plus there's Senatorial privileges that allow Senators to ear mark, and to fold in legislation in omnibus to hide allocations and rules...
And there's always those Constitutional legal challenges...d becasue the electoral cycle never ends, there's always the need to respond to immediate political concerns... Like the Primary in Iowa.
A British PM has 4 to 5 years before the need to respond to the electorate arises.

In a parliamentary system, especially in a centralized nation like the UK, a PM with a majority is, as Jean Chretien was called in Canada , A Friendly Dictator
And its so much easier to enact sweeping change when you have most of the power.

rickyp wrote:The rise of a Maggie Thatcher in the US is less likely because of the different political systems.

Such an American would still be able to get a lot done because of his/her message and the manner in which it is communicated.

RickyP,
If 99 senators want a bill brought to a vote, and one does not; do you think the bill can be stopped? Please tell me how one senator can block legislation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate

A senator can delay (procedurally), but not block a bill altogether. Am I misreading you?

Just guessing here, but when GWB dies, you will see FAR more lefties celebrating than you will see righties celebrating when Obama dies. I hope the numbers in either situation are small (and thankfully probably will be) but no doubt, the left will win this horrible contest of who is uglier in tragedy.

I thought you'd already had someone who was the equivalent of Thatcher - her good buddy Ronald Reagan. Reaganomics and Thatcherism were not that far apart, after all. You need another one already?

(loving how a thread about a British PM has to end up as being all about US politics, though).

Back to the Baroness...

Ray Jay wrote:In the conservative press, it's about Britain was close to bankruptcy, she broke the unions that were strangling productivity, she de-nationalized companies that were grossly inefficient, she lowered the tax rate from 90% plus to 40%, and started an economic boom that propelled England from a declining power to a productive economy.

Well, let's really look at those things.

'close to bankruptcy'? Well, hmm, not really. As I mentioned, the IMF had been brought in already - under the previous government, but a re-look at the books since then has shown that we could have managed without their loans. And the restructuring that they prescribed was already happening before Thatcher (hence the unions being in major dispute with the Labour government of Callaghan). Still, the thing that was going to stave off bankruptcy was North Sea oil, already discovered during the 1970s.

'broke the unions that were strangling productivity'? it's a point of view. I'm not going deny that there were unions and leader who were causing more harm than good, and spoiling for a political fight, but there was a lot more to it than that. First of all, there was a fair bit of political revenge going on - a union dispute, and the failure to resolve it, had resulted in the previous Conservative government under Heath losing power. Also, when it comes to productivity the unions had nothing that could strangle it like the stupidity of British management.

'de-nationalized companies that were grossly inefficient'. Not always. Rolls Royce was turned around by nationalisation and was sold off on it's way up. Some of the other denationalisations were a bit suspect - the money that the taxpayer got for some key assets and utilities was dwarfed by the true valuations of them. The telling thing is that 20% of UK electricity market is taken up by the French nationalised power and electric company EDF.

What I contrast our path in the 1980s with is that of Germany. They didn't sell off utilities that were inefficient so much as make them more efficient. Their economy is far less unbalanced than ours, with finance and services important, but less dominating than in the UK.

"lowered the tax rate from 90% plus to 40%". Yes, she did lower the highest income tax rate (well, she didn't, her Chancellors of the Exchequer did) - of course most people were paying far lower rates the whole time, but those basic rates did come down. At the same time, National Insurance went up, and VAT went up (the latter probably contributed to the 'double dip' recession of the early 1980s, a lesson our current government decided to repeat in 2010). What is often also missed off is that shortly after she left office we went into a deep recession on the back of that late 80s boom. I believe you guys had the same thing.

And while you eager 'reformers' are keen to have such hard and fast change, on the same scale as Maggie Thatcher, I guess it's because you assume you won't end up as the 'collateral damage'.

Thatcher left the rich much richer, but unlike her post-war predecessors, she also left the poor poorer. We have been seeing the effects of that for many years (especially as even the Labour government of 1997-2010 did little to change the underlying economic policies).

What also grates, to be honest, was her apparent lack of concern over the fates of those who lost out. Now we have a whole generation of politicians who seem to think that's how to behave. For someone who (mis)quoted St Francis of Assisi's Prayer on taking office, her missing out the next lines was in retrospect quite telling:

" O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen. "

I liked what I knew about Thatcher, I was most certainly not as well versed in UK politics as our UK friends here nor was I as knowledgeable then as now (I was in College at that time). She was tough as nails and it seemed to me that this was the time when the US and UK grew to be as tight as we are. Yes, we have been very close for a long long time now but it was then that it seemed to me that we became tied at the hip and frankly I would say the number one ally of the US is the UK with Canada being a distant second and Canada is on our border, the longest undefended border in the world.

I find this notion of quick and brutal vs. gradual to be very interesting. In some ways, I think that the US is like the pre-Thatcher UK. We have become ungovernable with polarized ideologies and politics. we can't even seem to do the easy things like standing up to the ethanol lobby or stopping much of the Sat. mail delivery. If you make the change gradually, the special interest retains its footing and keeps the program alive and feeding at the federal trough. Eventually the politics realigns and the program grows back more convoluted and more expensive than before. Perhaps the only way to make change is to do it quick and brutal.

You may be right. I'd hesitate to say that it's so simple though, and even if it is there are always alternatives that might be preferable to either extreme.

The issue as regards Thatcher's economic policy is that while she certainly managed to break the suffocating grip of overly-political trade unionism and excessive taxation, which was good for the economy as a whole, the tactics she employed to do it left a number of major urban centres in this country locked into a cycle of welfare dependancy. I'm not convinced that it really needed to be this way in order to effect change.

But anyway, my point was really just to explain to a foreign audience why you might be seeing people celebrating the death of one of our most significant political leaders. She was a great PM, but she created a lot of victims along the way and it's probably pushing it to expect people who hated her while she was alive to be respectful when she died.

Just guessing here, but when GWB dies, you will see FAR more lefties celebrating than you will see righties celebrating when Obama dies. I hope the numbers in either situation are small (and thankfully probably will be) but no doubt, the left will win this horrible contest of who is uglier in tragedy.

Bush will live for a long time yet, barring some kind of major incident with his health. Chances are he'll be little more than a footnote by the time he dies.