Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
And thats usually enough!
To me, she hasnt quite gotten it.
(This lightness was not natural; she adopted it at the suggestion of her image consultant.)
However, Ive noticed that those who lived through the Thatcher era are more convinced of its accuracy.
Lets talk about the hatred.The Crownmakes clear that Thatcher was hated because of her policies.
Subsidized industries were cut off.
Anything that could be put up for sale was.
Still, whatThe Crownunderstands is that the substance of her government was sometimes less important than the style.
As Tony Judt puts it inPostwar, Thatcherism was about how you govern, rather than what you do.
However, as Judt writes, As an economy … Thatcherized Britain was a more efficient place.
But as a society it suffered meltdown, with catastrophic long-term consequences.
Income inequality rose, too, as did crime.
The attendant loss of civic trust and social cohesion was no less real for being unquantifiable.
In their place was the Britain of today.
Lets get more specific.
As Alwyn Turner writes inRejoice!
But he would say that, wouldnt he?
An earlier episode,The Balmoral Test,takes slightly more liberties.
What about the Falklands?
Was she reallyspurred to action by her sons disappearancein the Sahara Desert?Probably not.
Thats to be expected; this isThe Crownwere talking about, where the political is always personal.
Anyway, one doubts Thatcher would have needed a Freudian excuse to go to war for the islands.
If she was so unpopular, how did she stay in office for 11 years?Great question!
After the Conservatives victory in the 1979 general election, Labour splintered.
It was a disaster.
But her supporters were not limited to Essex day traders and Murdoch acolytes.
Her whole ethos was about you being more enterprising and getting on with it.
Why did the backbenchers revolt?
Part of it was the economy, which had crashed again in 1987.
And, after more than a decade at Downing Street, she simply had no allies left.
But that of course is the point: Margaret Thatcher governedalone.
