Reflecting on the UCL Libertarian dinner at Real Man Pizza last Thursday and on a chat with its guest speaker my mind turns back to Lady Thatcher and wondering what were her greatest failings as Prime Minister. Thinking off the top of my head my top seven would be:
1. A failure to reform the world’s third largest employer, the NHS so that it cared for patients in a cost effective manner rather than looked after over-paid and unaccountable staff
2. A failure to privatise the BBC
3. A failure to start the process of increasing the retirement age so that it tracked life expectancy as the system was meant to do at inception.
4. A failure to stand up to Mugabe when he committed genocide in Matabeleland in 1982. At that point Africa’s Hitler could have been stopped.
5. The imposition of clause 28 – a horrific and vile piece of legislation
6. From her days in the Heath regime when she led the charge against Grammar schools – a failure to reverse that policy.
7. A failure to engineer a root and branch reform of the welfare state to end the dependency culture.
Have I missed anything out? Do you disagree on those seven? Her list of achievements was towering but no-one is perfect.