Thatcherism continues to cast its long shadow over British politics. At the general election Tony Blair explicitly claimed to be moving beyond Thatcherism and William Hague implicitly claimed to be moving back to it. During the campaign it was difficult to be sure what image best captured the brooding presence of the eponymous Lady. If she appeared to the Tory faithful as a painfully nostalgic evocation of the glory days, this may remind us that the average age of party members is currently 67. If she inspired Labour to suggest that an otherwise dull election was fraught with unsuspected ideological peril by showing us, on the hoardings, that the bald fact of Hague's leadership threatened a hairy and scary exercise in recidivism, it was actually a backhanded tribute. Dear, dead days or ever-present danger; messiah or devil; dream or nightmare: here was a reproach to the politics of apathy which acknowledged the heroic status of the Thatcherite era.

LRB 19 July 2001 | PDF Download