In praise of the Iron Lady

Daniel Hannan reminds us about the greatness of the Iron Lady, who still is hated by so many Lefties: 

Now and again, we are reminded of the sheer nastiness of a certain kind of Leftie. Not, let me stress, all Lefties: I have Labour friends who are motivated by a more or less uncomplicated desire to help the disadvantaged. 

But they march alongside some committed haters who define their politics not by what they like, but by what they loathe. They also define opponents not as human beings with whom they disagree, but as legitimate targets. 

A lack of empathy, bordering almost on sociopathy sits behind their talk of caring and sharing.

On sale at the TUC Conference, before a storm of protest forced their withdrawal, were T-shirts glorying in the eventual death of Margaret Thatcher. 

‘A generation of trade unionists will dance on Thatcher’s grave,’ says one, emblazoned with the image of her tombstone.

And one cannot but agree with Hannan´s praise for Margaret Thatcher. Without her strong leadership the UK would have been facing a cathastrophe, and without her close co-operation with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, the world would be a lot less safer place: 

Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979 was like a thaw after the cruellest of winters. Inflation fell, strikes stopped, the latent enterprise of a free people was awakened. 

Having lagged behind for a generation, we outgrew every European country in the Eighties except Spain (which was bouncing back from an even lower place). As revenues flowed in, taxes were cut and debt was repaid, while public spending — contrary to almost universal belief — rose. 

In the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher showed the world that a great country doesn’t retreat forever.

And by ending the wretched policy of one-sided detente that had allowed the Soviets to march into Europe, Korea and Afghanistan, she set in train the events that would free hundreds of millions of people from what, in crude mathematical terms, must be reckoned the most murderous ideology humanity has known.

Why, then, do Lefties loathe her so much? 

You always get the same answer: ‘She closed down the old industries.’ 

She didn’t, of course: she simply stopped obliging everyone else to subsidise them. 

But let’s leave that objection to one side. Ask yourselves this, my Leftie friends: in what other developed country are the heavy industries still going as they were in the Seventies? 

The world was changing and every nation had to adapt. All over Europe and North America, steel mills, coal mines and dockyards were closing, unable to compete with the developing world. 

And unable to compete for a happy reason: a relatively high standard of living

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