Margaret Thatcher: faultless on the Falklands but a disaster at home

I’m afraid we have to use Nelson Mandela as an example once again. He is proving very useful in his dotage, old Nels, as a comparison for stuff. A sort of benchmark. So, when the BBC’s Eddie Mair kebabed Boris Johnson and called him a ‘pretty nasty piece of work’, it seemed to me relevant to ask if he would level the same sort of charge at Nelson, were Eddie ever to be afforded an interview with the sainted man. Nelson’s organisation, remember, blew things up with bombs, and people died: he was a terrorist — whereas in effect all Boris did was schtupp some ditsy babe and tell Michael Howard a porkie pie.

But it is unimaginable that Mr Mair would have been as rough on Nelson as he was on Boris; he would, instead, have been utterly reverential. Likewise, then, imagine what would happen if — when Nelson ascends to that great laager in the sky — right-wingers danced on the streets of London with bottles of champagne singing songs of a celebratory nature bearing placards exulting that at last the bastard is dead! Can you imagine the outrage? It is inconceivable that the revellers would not be arrested and charged under some public order act or hate crime.

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Lee Cohen

Mandelson is the wrong man, at the wrong time

Or how about this — a right-wing politician announcing on Twitter that they hoped the dirt would be properly stamped down on his grave? This is what the repulsive self-publicising semi-Muslim appeaser of Arab despots George Galloway tweeted of Margaret Thatcher.