Thatcher bounces back

On the eve of the 25th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 general election triumph, Simon Heffer says the Iron Lady has a new spring in her step

In her 79th year, widowed after a long and happy marriage, and having endured indifferent health, Lady Thatcher might seem to some to have become vulnerable, damaged and a target for pity. Certainly, a spiteful profile of her in a Sunday newspaper a few weeks ago gave the impression that the Iron Lady was now like a cross between Miss Havisham and Lady Circumference, a mixture of the tragic and the absurd. Yet on the 25th anniversary of her triumph in the 1979 general election, Britain’s first woman prime minister — and the only one still to win three successive contests — is not in the mentally and physically reduced circumstances that her enemies would like to imagine.

She is inevitably older and, after a succession of minor strokes, inevitably frailer. However, the mighty spirit is not yet extinguished and, after a truly horrible year that included her husband’s death, Lady T is bouncing back. The occasion of this anniversary means much to her, and she is gladly playing a full part in events to commemorate it. Her appetite for a fight on issues that matter deeply to her — such as the Anglo-American relationship, or what she sees as the threat from Europe to our national sovereignty — is undiminished. She might now have those confrontations with friends and visitors in private rather than on public platforms, but the vigour with which she still holds such positions proves that the light is not yet extinguished.