Thatcher resignation – The Observer 1990
April 9th, 2013
The Observer Files This week in 1990
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.” Mrs Thatcher’s exit from the political stage was no less heroic, and only slightly less bloody, than the Thane of Cawdor’s execution. Like some great jungle beast, wounded but still magnificent, she had to be stopped in her tracks before she caused irreparable damage to her party and the country.
Her legacy is bleak. This is the true measure of the Thatcher decade. She made the whole world feel that she had halted the historic spiral of British decline, but the facts are there to disprove it. Our manufacturing base is seriously eroded; inflation, unemployment and interest rates remain high; the balance of payments has rocketed despite the God-given benefits of North Sea oil. She helped the better off to help themselves while running down the standards of health and education provided for the majority. She created a social divisiveness that stretched the nation’s fabric to breaking point. All this has relevance to the debate over the succession, because it highlights the need, not to “build on Thatcherism”, but to break away from its excesses.
Key Quote
“I was shocked. I was expecting her to look cold and steely but she looked vulnerable and depressed, rather sad.”
An unnamed cabinet minister describes the scene of Thatcher’s resignation..
Larry Elliot wrote an excellent article in the Guardian in 2004 about the effect the Thatcher government had on the economy and I have linked it here:-