It is, you may have heard, Margaret Thatcher’s 86th Birthday today. By way of a
congratulatory toast to the Iron Lady, here’s a thought-filled article that T.E. Utley wrote about her politics, for The Spectator, some 25 years ago:
Don’t call it Thatcherism, T.E. Utley, The Spectator, 19 August 1986
There is no such thing as Thatcherism. The illusion that there is is in part a deliberate creation of Mrs Thatcher’s enemies. They have proceeded on the age-old maxim that there is nothing (certainly not private scandal) more likely to injure the reputation of a British politician than the suggest that he has an inflexible devotion to principle. This maxim is only partly true, but is an unshakeably established belief, a fact which helps to make it truer than it otherwise would be.
The illusion is in part also the creation of a coterie of admiring friends by whom Mrs Thatcher has been surrounded.
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